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OUGHT FRANCE 


TO 



/ 

AHRIMAN III. 


'I 


K.G. 



Audi alteram partem 
****** 
Semper ecjo auditor tantum ? nunquamne reponam, 
Vexatus toties ? (Les anciens partis.) 


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LONDON: 

ROBEET HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY. 


1863. 




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• 99 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE 

BONAPARTES ? 


d 





V 



AHRIMAN III.* 


‘ 1 In the presence of God, I swear to be faithful to the democratic 
one and indivisible Republic.” —Man of December as President , 
Dec. 21, 1848. 

“ He who overreaches by a false oath, declares that he fears his 
enemy, but despises his God.”— Plutarch' 1 s Lysander. 

“The Napoleonic star is Mercury, the god of deportation, theft, 
and lies . . . Let those who will, assert that the monstrous attempt 
is right—let those who can, suppose that it will prove triumphant 
—we shall believe it when we see the brute assume dominion over 
man, and the powers of hell prevail against the God of heaven.”— 
Times , 1852. 

Multa miser timeo, quia feci multa protervfc, 

Exemplique metu torqueor ipse mei. 

Ovid. 

II n’est rien qui ne cede a l’ardeur de regner 
Et depuis qu’une fois elle nous inquiete, 

La nature est aveugle, et la vertu muette. 

Corneille. 

“In a country like England, a coalition produces the same effect 
as in continental lands is produced by a coup d'etat. It suspends 
political life , and from such a state of affairs there is an inevitable reaction 
tvhich no nation can escape. That reaction will come in countries 
where coups d'etat have succeeded, as it will come in countries which 
are still ruled by the remnants of exhausted coalitions.”— Disraeli. 


* Ahriman, as the principle of evil, was an object of “culte” to the ancient 
Persians. 


A 2 




4 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


The French Imperial Oath.— Tile Journal des Debats , as already 
announced, lias received a second warning for an article published 
in its number of the 21st on the subject of the elections. The fol¬ 
lowing motives are given for the measure:—“Whereas the Senatus 
Consultum of the 17th February, 1852, has for its sole object to 
impose on all candidates for a seat in the Legislative Body the 
obligation of an oath; whereas this oath, prescribed on pain of 
nullity of the election, is thus worded : ‘ I swear obedience to the 
Constitution, and fidelity to the Emperorconsidering that the 
author of the article above mentioned pretends that the political 
oath claims no other engagement and imposes no other duty than 
not to enter into the doubtful and obscure paths of conspiracies and 
to observe respect for the laws recommended, by morality, to all 
good citizens; and inasmuch as he thereby seeks to deceive the 
public mind on the bearing of a solemn act which forms an absolute 
bond of honour between him who lends and him who receives—between the 
Emperor and the candidate —a second warning is hereby given,” &c. 
—Man of December as Emperor , 1863. 

I pr’ythee do not hold me to mine oath, 

Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek. 

Shakespeare. 

“ It might seem that he who had first sworn to maintain the Republic , 
and had afterwards destroyed it in the night time , would not again be much 
trusted by his fellow creatures .”— Kinglake. 

“Les fripons ne manquent jamais de mettre en avant une morale 
d’autant plus severe, qu’elle ne les engage a rien dans la pra¬ 
tique ; personne ne parle plus haut de probite, que ceux qui n’en 
ont gu5re.”— La Ilarpe. 

“ Though he was not a man to be stopped by scruples, he did not 
discard the use of loyalty and faithfulness, where loyalty and faithful¬ 
ness seemed likely to answer his purposed — Kinglake , ii. 26. 

“ The Emperor of the French had shown that he was capable of 
the darkest secresy in his own designs.”— Kinglake , ii. 132. 

“The ingenious Emperor of the French devised a scheme of 
action so ambiguous in its nature, that, at the option of any man 
who spoke about it, it might be called either peace or war.”— King- 
lake , i. 379. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


5 


’Tis gold, 

Which makes the true man kill’d, and saves the thief. 

Shakespeare. 

“Unterliegt nicht der bessere Mann, wenn man sich gegen 
ihn Aides, selbst Treufosigkeit, erlaubt, welclie sich zu denken er 
unfahig ist, mit grosserm Buhm, als wenn er solchen Schlingen 
entgangen ware?”— Schiller . 


A man, 

Unsounded yet, and full of deep deceit. 

Shakespeare. 


A guirar presti i mentitor son sempre. 

Alfieri. 

Ose accuser le destin d’injustice, 

Quand tu vois que les tiens s’arment pour ton supplice, 

Et que, par ton exemple a ta perte guides, 

Us violent des droits, que tu n’as pas gardes, 

Leur trahison est juste, et le ciel l’autorise. 

Corneille. 

“ Ita fit, dum dixisse omnia vis videri, ut nihil fere nisi pugnantia 
loqnaris. ’ ’— Milton . 

“ Cujus asseveratio firmissima non est pili; quid enim te levins, 
quid inconstantius; quid instabilius? quoties te varium et versi- 
colorem, quoties tibimet discordem, dissidentem a temet ipso, et 
discrepantem offendimus ? ’ ’— Milton . 

On cherche ce qu’il dit, apr£s qu’il a parle. 

Moliere. 

“ Eine so zusammengesetze und lange Kette ven Betrug, eine so 
undurchdringliche, so gehaltene Yerstellung, ein so tiefes Still- 
schweigen aller Menschengefiihle, ein so freches Spiel mit den 
heiligsten Pfandern des Yestrauens scheint einen vollendeten Bose- 
wicht zu erfordern, der durch eine lange Ubung verhartet, und seiner 
Leidenschaften vollkommen Herr geworden ist.”— Schiller. 

“ The Emperor Louis Napoleon, more than most other men, was 
accustomed to linger in doubt between two conflicting plans, and to 
delay his final adoption of the one, and his final rejection of the 
other, for as long a time as possible.”— Kinglake , i. 338. 

<i On more than one important occasion he selected a Ministry the 


6 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


character of whose members seemed to be a security against the 
execution of projects which he was even then contemplating, and 
when the proper moment came, they made way for those previously 
fixed upon to carry them out.”— Times. 

“Perhaps he was only obeying that doubleness of mind which 
made him always prone to do acts clashing one with another.”— 
Kingldke , i. 349. 

Vediarn, se in pun to e il tutto, 

Per insegnare alia malnata plebe, 

Che in lei non piu, ma tutta in me sta ’1 regno. 

Alfieri. 

For thousands more, that yet suspect no peril, 

"Will not conclude their plotted tragedy. 

Shakespeare. 

Piu non se rende agli innocent! vita. 

Alfieri. 

“In France there had during the first half of this century been 
eight different revolutions of dynasties or governments, giving an 
average of one every six years.”— Earl of Malmesbury. 

“In 1848 the French people deposed a king, for what fault it 
was difficult to point out, and they declared a Republic.”— Earl 
Russell. 

“In 1848, if the views of the majority of intelligent Frenchmen 
had been collected, the last idea which would have presented itself 
to them would have been the accession of the present Emperor.”— 
Earl Granville. 

“To a certain extent all Englishmen will agree with Mr. King- 
lake’s appreciation of that event.^ We certainly never met with any 
who did not sternly condemn it , and who did not turn with horror from 
the contemplation of the slaughter which followed.''' 1 —Morning Star.] 

“Es gibt Unthaten, die der Bechtschaffene kaum eher fur 
moglich halten darf, als bis er die Erfahrung davon gemacht hat.” 
— Schiller. 

“ Crimes committed by might remain crimes—public horror is the 
penalty.”— Victor Hugo. 

* The coup de meurtre of the Man of December, 
f Lord Palmerston is believed to be almost the only exception. 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


7 


“The main question about Monaldeschi is, whether it was strictly 
a murder, or, as Mr. Woodhead calls it, ‘an irregular execution.’ 
If it was strictly a murder, we may be sure that Louis XIV., not¬ 
withstanding the Dragonnades and the devastation of the Palatinate, 
would not have been guilty of it. Of course there is a third form of 
cruelty worse than either. A massacre of one's fellow-countrymen to 
secure one's own private ends has the advantage of uniting loth hinds of 
wickedness. But for that we must look elsewhere than either to 
Christina or Louis the Great.”— Saturday Review. 

“ Condemnatus essem, nisi ab exercitu auxilium petissem.”— 
Suetonius. 

“bum pro concione pollicetur se principatu abiturum, legibus 
et imperiis etiam aliorum obtemperaturum, retentis apud se semper 
legionibus, dum simulate renuit imperium, sensim invasit, quasi 
Deus aut naturae lex omnes et homines et leges illi subjecisset.”— 
Milton. 

“Die Hiiupter der siegenden Partei sparten nichts von List und 
Gewalt, um die Friichte der Thaten sich zu sichern, liber welche 
bliiss ein gliicklicher Ausgang, jener falsche Probirstein des Schlechten 
und des Guten , ihneii die Eeue ersparen zu konnen schien.”— Schiller. 

‘ ‘ Captus imperii consuetudine, pensitatesque suis et inimicorum 
viribus, usus est occasione rapiendte dominationis, quam setate 
prima concupiverat. ”— Suetonius. 

“France had fallen under the mere control of the second Bona¬ 
parte ; and in order to divine what she would do, it was necessary to 
make out what scheme of action her ruler would deem to be most 
conducive to his comfort and safety.”— Kinglake. 

“He chose rather to solicit the favour of the multitude and the 
poor, than of the rich and the few, contrary to his natural disposi¬ 
tion, which was far from inclining him to court popularity.”— 
Plutarch , de Pericle. 

“Though the government was called democratical, it was really 
in the hands of one man, who had engrossed the whole authority.” 
-Ib. 

Be it my course to busy giddy minds 

With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, 

May waste the memory of former days; 

Lest rest, and lying still, might make them look 
Too near into my state. 


Shakespeare, 


8 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


“ I will not have any obligation to a tyrant in business, by wbicli 
he subverts the laws; and he does subvert the laws by saving, as a 
master, those over whom he has no right of authority.”— Cato , ap. 
Plutarch. 

II guisto 6 solo, 

Chi sa fingerlo meglio; e chi nasconde 
Con piii destro artifizio i sensi sui 
Nel teatro del mondo agli occhi altrui. 

Metastasio. 

“ Changes among the ministers—it would be scarcely right to say 
“change of Cabinet” when one man is really the G-overnment— 
are decided upon, and by all accounts will be soon officially an¬ 
nounced. ”— Times. 

“ The duplicity of his character is obvious from the whole acts of 
his life. He paid not the least regard to veracity in political 
matters.’’— Langhorne , Alcibiades. 

“ Cetera magis ex natura, et priore vita sua, quam ex imperii 
maj estate gessit. ’ ’— Suetonius. 

“Altiora jam meditans, et spei plenus, nullum largitionis aut 
offieiorum in quemquam genus, publice privatumque omisit .... 
cum adhuc favorem hominum moderationis simulatione captaret.” 
—Ib. 

“Ccetera item, qusecuique libuissent, dilargitus est, contradicente 
nullo, aut, si conaretur quis, absterrito.”— Ib. 

“Nemo unquam imperium, flagitio qusesitum, bonis artibus 
exercuit.”— Tacitus. 

“Nulhe in hoc orbe terrarum res duse magis e regione adverse© 
sibi sunt, quam tu nequissimus nequissimo semper fere adversus es 
tibi.”— Milton. 

“ Ad vim conversus est, instigante etiam magnitudine ccris alieni. 
Neque enim dissimulabat, nisi principem, se stare non posse ; 
nihilque referre ab hoste in acie, an in foro sub creditoribus caderet.” 
— Suetonius. 

“ Quod neque opera consummare, qua) instituerat, neque populi 
expectationem, quam de adventu suo fecerat, privatis opibus explore 
posset, turbare omnia ac penniscere voluit.”— Ib. 

Guidice poscia ei vi si fea per fraude; 

Or, per forza, tiranno. Ei noma pace 
La universal viltade ; atro di morte 
Sopor quest’ e, non pace. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BON AT ARTE S ? 


9 


.or chc aspettate ? il duro, 

II peggior d’ogni morte orribil giogo 
Imposto a voi da voi, clie d uom vi lascia 
II volto appena, e il non dovuto nome, 

Perche da voi non cade infranto a terra ? 

Alfiert. 

“ 0 facinus indignum et execranclum! impium qui fecit, quid 
dicam, qui defendit ? Nam quae potuit, per Deum immortalem, quae 
perfidia, aut juris violatio, esse magis? Quid illi sanctius, post 
sacratissima religionis mysteria, illo jure jurando esse debuit ? 
Quis, quaeso, sceleratior, is ne qui in legem peccat, an qui secum 
legem ipsam ut peccare faciat, dat operam, aut denique ipsam 
legem tollit, ne peccasse videatur ? ... . Quid aliud potuit sperari, 
nisi injustissime, versutissime, atque infelicissime regnatum esse 
eum, qui ab injuria tarn detestanda auspicatus regnumest?”— 
Milton. 

“Pro se illi quidem servitutem spondere, si vellent; pro nobis 
certe non poterant, quibus idem semper jus erit nosmet liberandi, 
quod illis erat in servitutem se cuilibet tradendi.”— II. 

Y’ha patria dove 

Sol uno vuole, e l’obbediscon tutti ? 

Patria, onor, liberta, Penate, figli, 

Gia dolci nomi, or di noi schiavi in bocca 
Mai si confon, fin cbe quell’ un respira, 

Clie ne rapisce tutto. Ormai le stragi, 

Le violenze, le rapine, l’onte, 

Son lidvi mali; il pessimo e dei mali 
L’ ALTO TREMOR, CHE I CUORI TUTTI INGOMBRA, 

Non che parlar, neppur osan mirarsi 
L’un l’altro in volto i cittadini incerti 
Tanto & il sospetto, e il diffidar. 

Alfieri. 

“ Quelques personnes, que leur conduite avait mis bors d’etat de 
vivi'e dans leur patrie, entreprirent d’en changer la forme du 
gouvernement, afin d’y pouvoir rentrer.”— Puffendorf. 

“ Le plus coupable, persuade de la facilite de l’entreprise, se rendit 
dans la ville, ou il fut bien recu par les seditieux. Les chefs de la 
Kepublique 1’envoyerent complimenter, mais lorsqu’on s’appercut 
de son dessein, on voulut prendre les precautions pour s’y opposer. 
Les factieux firent alors ouvrir les portes aux troupes, qu’il avait 


10 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


fait approcher de la ville. Les capitaines de l’etat, trop faibles 
pour resister, furent contrains de lui remettre les clefs, en 
protestant neanmoins contre cette violence. Maitre de la ville, il 
voulut exiger des habitans le serment du fidelite; mais plusieurs 
abandonnerent leur patrie plutot que d’y consentir, d’autres plus 
courageux firent serment d’etre fideles a leur patrie. On usa de 
rigueur pour les reduire.”— Pujfendorf. 

“In France, for tbe most part, the gentlemen of tbe country 
resolved to stand aloof from the Government, and not only declined 
to vouchsafe their society to the new occupant of the Tuileries, but 
even looked cold upon any stray person of their own station, who 
suffered himself to be tempted thither by money . . . After the 2nd 
December in the year 1851, the foreign policy of France was used 
for a prop, to prop the throne which Morny and his friends had built 
up .... and was governed in all things by the personal exigencies 
of those who wielded it.”— Kinglake. 

“ Ahriman and his followers, disarmed and subdued, will sink 
into their native darkness.”— Gibbon. 

S’io delle leggi * all’ ombra a tanto crebbi, 

Anch’ oggi schermo elle me fieno ; io posso 
E se crearle, struggerle, spiegarle— 

Molt’ arte vuolsi a impor perfetto il giogo— 

Ma men. ch’ io n’ bo. Pin lieve era mi assai 

Conquider voi, feri patrizi,f in cui 

Sol forza ha l’oro, e pria vien manco l’oro, 

Che in voi l’avara sete; io ho frattanto, 

Se non satolli, pieni; hovvi stromenti 
Fatti alt’ eccidio popolar per ora; 

Spegnervi poscia, il di verra, poca opra 
A chi v’a oppressi, ed avviliti, e compri. 

Alfieri. 

Il poter sovrano, 

Che a me voi deste, or l’obliate voi? 

Di Francia in me la maesta riposta 
Tutta non £ da voi ? piacciavi dumque 
In me, ven prego, rispettar voi stessi.— lb. 


* The law enacting the flagitious farce of universal suffrage. 
+ Royalist and Orleanist renegades. 





OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


11 


Ben fai; sprezzar chi a te obbedisce dei; 

Ma il di, che andavi il favor nostro vano 

Tu mendicando, il di, che te fingevi 

Umile per superbia, e per viltade 

Magnanimo, e incorrotto, e giusto, e pio 

Per empieta, quel di parlar t’ udimino 

Meno altero d’ alquanto. A tutti noto, * 

Tiranno, omai sei; di rientrare, incauto, 

In tua natura te affrettasti troppo.— lb. 

Ecco la strada, 

Eccogli auspici, onde a rcgnar salisti.— lb 

Or, che vi resta 

A perder piu ? la mal secura vita, 

E a che pib vita, ove l’onor, la prole 
La patria, il cor, la liberta v* e tolta ?— lb. 

[Man of December] Il cittadin che puo far altro ormai 
Che obbedirmi e tacersi ? [E] Acchiusa spesso 
Nel silenzio e vendetta [Man of December] In quel di pochi 
Ma, nel silenzio di una gente inter a, 

Trimor si acchiude e servitu. — lb. 

Oggi il passato 

Obliar dessi, e di Fortuna il crine 
Forte afferrare.— lb. 

A1 ciel palese appieno 

E il ver. Ma che dich’ io ? soltanto al cielo ? 

S’io volgo intento a me d’ attorno il guardo, 

Non vegg’ io che ciascuno appien sa il vero ? 

Che il tace ognuno ? e che l’udirlo, e il dirlo, 

Qui da gran tempo e capital delitto ?— lb. 

“A gallant, brave, and honest man, a great general, and an honest 
republican, sails from Genoa, and overturns the monarchy of Sicily 
and Naples. Garibaldi, who does the whole thing, and fights the 
whole battles, the moment they are over is dispossessed, and 
Napoleon, through his vassal, the King of Sardinia, steps in and 
quietly takes the whole of the country that Garibaldi had won in a 
noble cause (?) He will tell Europe, that he has given so much to 
Sardinia, that Sardinia is so powerful that he must get something 
to counterbalance it, and that something will be the island of Sar¬ 
dinia and Genoa, which will at once give him the command of the 
Mediterranean. The war in the South is headed by Napoleon, 


12 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

WHO IS ANXIOUS TO WASH OUT THE DISGRACE OF WATERLOO IN THE 

occupation of London.”— Sir Archibald Alison, 1860. 

“ Obedience is good and indispensable; but if it be obedience to wbat 
is wrong and false, good heavens! there is no name for such a depth 
of human cowardice and calamity, spurned everlastingly by the 
gods. Loyalty! Will you be loyal to Beelzebub ? Will you ‘ make 
a covenant with death and hell ? ’ I will not be loyal to Beelzebub. 
I will become a nomadic Chactau rather, a barricading Sans-culotte, 
a Conciliation Hall repealer; anything and everything is venial 
to that.”— Carlyle . 

“M. Bonaparte n’avait pas travaille avec tant d’ardeur au 
retablissement de sa maison, pour la laisser dans l’obscurite au 
milieu des citoyens qui l’avaient vue autrefois si distinguee par sa 
puissance et ses richesses. Porte par son ambition a relever 1’eclat 
de sa famille, il y etait encore excite pour les anciens partisans de sa 
maison, et par plusieurs de ceux que ne tenaient pas, dans la Republique, 
un rang qui repondit d la bonne opinion qui Us avaient de leur merite. 
Mons. B. crut devoir employer la force pour 1’execution de son 

dessein.Quelques soldats forcerent le Palais, ou l’on 

tenait pour lors un conseil.Les magistrats, ne 

pouvant s’opposer a cette violence, convocjuerent l’assemblee du 
peuple au son de la grosse cloche. La vue des gens, armes en faveur 
des Bonapartes, celle des soldats qui etaient entres dans la ville, 
et la crainte de l’armee qui etait dans le voisinage, forcerent 
le peuple a consentir a toute ce que M. Bonaparte voulut. On lui 

donna.un pouvoir aussi etendu que celui de tout le 

peuple assemble.On mit une garde perpetuelle au 

Palais, et les Bonapartes, ayant repris leur ancien rang, gouverne- 
ment, avec plus d’autorite que jamais.*— Puffendorf. 

Le droit des rois consiste a ne rien epargner 
La timide equite detruit l’art de regner, 

Quand en craint d’etre injuste, ou a toujours a craindre, 

Et qui veut tout pouvoir, doit oser tout enfreindre, 

Fuir comme un deshonneur la vertu qui le perd, 

Et voler sans scrupule au crime qui lui sert. 

Corneille f 


* In the original this is applied to the Cardinal de Medicis. 
f These miscellaneous extracts, from various authorities, as to the conduct, 











OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


13 


There have long existed in this country, and in many others, a 
number of excellent and respectable persons, who, on principle, are 
altogether averse to dramatic representations. It is not necessary, 
on this occasion, that their opinion should be either commended or 
controverted. But I may venture to remark, that there is one expe¬ 
dient, which, if it were practicable, would greatly tend to further the 
prevalence of their views—namely, that of causing the most im¬ 
portant characters in the most popular plays to be filled by unskilful 
and ungainly actors, who were only fit to sweep the floors or to snuff 
the candles. If Hamlet, for instance, were assigned to a clumsy 
clown, who would find the part of Rosencrantz rather beyond his 
mark, Falstaff to a short and slim performer, who would barely pass 
muster as Justice Shallow, the stage would soon fall into disrepute, 
the theatre be wholly deserted, the patience of its most thorough- 
paced votaries exhausted, and the whole concern become insolvent. 

It is not less true, that there are, in every part of the world, many 
able and acute individuals, who are conscientiously hostile to the 
monarchical system of government; and one of the strongest argu¬ 
ments in favour of their sentiments is derived from the feebleness, 
incapacity, or wrong-headedness of the individuals who have too 
often occupied the throne. The state of Europe at the present 
moment illustrates this principle in a sad and striking manner. A 
daring and desperate adventurer has, by dint of fraud and force, 
established a gross and grinding despotism upon the ruins of a great 
nation’s liberties. His ambition is insatiable—self-interest his only 
motive; all means are equally acceptable, provided they conduce to 
the attainment of the end. And yet the monarchs and ministers of 
Europe, although none of them can repose the slightest confi¬ 
dence in his most solemn protestations, remain, as regards each 
other, in a state of sullen and suspicious isolation, and only concur 
in the cowardly and criminal subserviency, with which they crouch 
and cringe at his feet. Each witnesses with unconcern the insults 
or injuries which the French ruler inflicts upon the others, and acts 
as if he said in his heart, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 

Nothing, I repeat, can be more abject than the pusillanimity of 


character, and motives of the 2nd December, may be regarded in the same light 
as the “ skirmishers,” who (as Mr. Kinglake informs us) preceded the attack of the 
grand army in the Crimea. 


14 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


tlie European sovereigns in reference to the Man of December, or 
more fatal than their mutual jarrings, jealousies, and suspicions. 
I believe that if he were to smite them on the right cheek, they 
would turn to him the other also. If he compelled them to go a 
mile, they would voluntarily go double the distance. If he were 
to ask, they would not dare refuse to give; and if he wanted to 
borrow, they would lend, hoping for nothing again. If he were 
to take away their coats, they would let him have their cloaks also ; 
and if one of them saw him snatch his neighbour’s cloak, he 
would allow him to do so with impunity, for fear that his own 
coat might be endangered. It is said that, at one of the 
monster hotels at New York, in which a number of different 
families occupy different suites of apartments, a culprit, who had 
long been debarred from all intercourse with his connexions, con¬ 
trived, by simulated appearances of penitence and amendment, to 
obtain a footing once more in the domestic circle, where, in process 
of time, he set them all together by the ears, contrived to corrupt and 
cajole the worst and wickedest of the inmates, expelled all the 
members most noted for talent and integrity, assumed unlimited 
authority over the establishment, and manifested a strong disposition 
to control and coerce all the other families dwelling beneath the 
roof; but who, instead of combining to resist his encroachments, 
still harped upon all their own petty grievances against each other. 
When he insulted or outraged one, the rest looked on with indiffe¬ 
rence, or even with satisfaction. Each endeavoured to court and 
coax him in every possible way; and whilst scarcely on speaking 
terms with one another, they were all proud to keep up a frequent 
interchange of hospitalities with the man whom they secretly 
detested and despised. 

It would no doubt in 1851 have been most unwise and unbe¬ 
coming on the part of other nations to have attempted to impose 
upon France any dynasty or form of government whatever. The 
most dignified and efficient plan which could, at such a crisis of 
difficulty and danger, have been adopted, would have been that the 
powers of Europe, both great and small, should have simultaneously 
put an end to all diplomatic relations with the Man of December, by 
withdrawing their representatives from the Tuileries, and issuing a 
joint address to the French people, stating that they all cherish 
towards France itself every feeling of cordiality and respect, and are 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


15 


as desirous that its boundaries should not be lessened, as they are 
determined that they shall not he enlarged; that nothing is more 
remote from their intentions than to interfere with its national 
government or constitution, which it appertains to France alone 
either to alter or to preserve; that even whilst the present ruler 
continues to occupy the throne, they never will commence hostili¬ 
ties, or endeavour to deprive France of any portion of its territory, 
but that any attempt on her part to infringe the peace, or invade the 
dominions of any other power, will be regarded by all the rest as 
equivalent to a declaration of war against the whole of Europe ; and 
that, whilst jointly resolved to avoid any breach of the peace, they 
never can, whilst the Bonaparte family is at the head of the govern¬ 
ment, enter into relations of intimacy, or even of intercourse, with 
France, but must leave her to manage her own affairs without any 
hindrance or molestation. 

The avowed and ardently pursued object of the Man of December 
has always been to sow discord and jealousy between the great 
powers of Europe, whose union brought about his uncle’s overthrow, 
and whose reciprocal estrangement is essential to the permanence 
of his dynasty and the prosecution of his designs. 

“ It is not for nothing that Louis Napoleon has boasted of having 
sown dissension everywhere in Europe, and of having a hand in 
every trouble. Wherever, indeed, there is trouble and agitation, 
we find him and his agents busy at their work of mischief, and 
invariably under the pretext of protecting somebody .”—Liberal 
paper. 

The result of his intrigues and cajoleries has been as successful as 
it has been untoward. 

‘ * If experience had not shown that absurd courses of conduct may 
nevertheless be adopted, the contingency of a war between Prussia 
and Austria might be safely pronounced impossible. It seems 
incredible that Germany, with France on one side and Eussia on the 
other, should deliberately divide itself into two belligerent parties 
for the purpose of settling a question of political precedence.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“ It is no easy matter to find a diplomatist of rank and standing 
who will consent to represent this Government at the Eussian Court, 
as Prince Gortschakoff systematically snubs everybody and thing 
that is Austrian .”—Liberal paper. 


16 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ Count Rechberg, who resides in a villa at a short distance from 
this city, does little else than address acrimonious despatches to the 
Prussian Government. ’ ’— lb. 

“ The enmity which animates Russia against the Austrian sove¬ 
reign, and the rivalries which divide Prussia and Austria on German 
matters, have had much to do with a determination which has deeply 
mortified the Court of Vienna.”— lb. 

The King of Prussia’s chief aims at this crisis are to alienate 
and disgust his loyal subjects by encroachments upon their liberties, 
to estrange himself from Austria, instead of consolidating an 
alliance with that power, in order to overawe their common enemy, 
and to cultivate the amity of the Man of December, whose uncle 
ruined his father’s dominions, and broke his mother’s heart. 

“It is incredible that a prince who is still believed to be honest, 
though dull, should try to mimic the fraudulent usurpation which 
has superseded liberty in Prance .”—Saturday Review. 

“His subjects are eminently unfortunate in their King. In his 
invasion of their rights we look in vain for the talent which gilds 
great offences, and the consistent conviction which sometimes makes 
even error respectable .”—Liberal Paper. 

“We begin our work under sad auspices, and feel it our duty to 
make respectful representations to your Majesty concerning the state 
of public affairs. Since last session the Ministers have carried 
on the public administration against the Constitution, and without 
a legal Budget. The supreme right of the representatives of the 
people has thereby been attacked. The country has been alarmed, 
and has stood by its representatives .”—Prussian Address. 

“ Unfortunately, it is found, that genius is not indispensable to 
absurdity, for the commonplace soldier now on the throne has 
assumed to himself the character of a supernaturally inspired 
martinet. ’ ’— Times. 

“ The King has occupied the three months which have intervened 
since the dispute arose in a manner equally undignified and unwise. 
He has caused to be got up in holes and corners addresses to him¬ 
self, approving his arbitrary policy ; and to the deputations bringing 
these addresses he has made some dozen of speeches, which may not 
only rank, as far as style goes, among the very worst of royal ora¬ 
tions at this time extant, but which tended to widen the breach 
with his Parliament, to alienate the hearts of his people, and to 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


17 


convince them that they had a King who could neither be constitu¬ 
tional with consistency, nor arbitrary with dignity.”— lb. 

“ Instead of practising the pre-eminently royal virtue of silence, 
the King, with feverish iteration, repeats to provincial deputations 
apologies for his conduct, which have suggested a comparison with 
the popular type of muddleheaded confusion, which at present adorns 
the English stage.”— lb. 

“ You hardly need to be told that this morning’s papers tear the 
speech to pieces, and in so doing they only echo the opinion one 
hears on every side expressed. ‘ Of all the speeches,’ says the 
National Zeitung, 1 which for fifteen years have been made in Prussia 
at the openings of sessions, that of yesterday is perhaps the emptiest 
and the most barren.”— lb. 

“ Our position imposes on us the most urgent duty of solemnly 
declaring that peace at home and power abroad can only be restored 
to the Government by its returning to a constitutional state of 
things.’’— Prussian Parliament. 

“If the Prussian Government perseveres in its present course, it 
will do all its enemies could wish to promote those designs which the 
ruler of France fosters , of extending his dominion to’its so-called 
‘ natural boundary.’ ”— Saturday Review. 

“ The near approach of the anniversary of the day on which, fifty 
years ago, was made the memorable summons of King Frederick 
William III. to his people for the deliverance of the * Fatherland,’ 
brings with it an earnest exhortation to attend to the wants of the 
needy among those who fought in the campaigns of that glorious 
period, and to that end corresponding bills will be laid before you.” 
—King William. 

“ The Emperor made the following reply :—‘ I at once accept the 
proposal of the King of Prussia to raise our “ legations ” to the rank 
of “ embassies.” It is an additional proof of the friendly sentiments 
which animate the two Sovereigns. Ever since I made the personal 
acquaintance of him whom you represent I have always desired a 
closer intimacy between us.’ ” King William might celebrate the 
anniversary of his father’s appeal to his people, against the uncle’s 
insulting tyranny, by announcing to their descendants his intimate 
friendship with the dark and designing nephew. 

“ * When, on the receipt of the news of the victory at Puebla, the 
Austrian Ambassador, Prince Metternich, proposed a toast to the 

B 


18 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


glorious French army, the Emperor Napoleon turned to the Prussian 
Charge d’Affaires, Prince Keuss, and drank with him to the honour¬ 
able and glorious bearing of the two Prussian officers who have 
fought with distinction in the ranks of the French army in Mexico.’ 
This was an act of courtesy on the part of a Sovereign who, at 
that moment, was doubtless himself very well pleased, and therefore 
disposed to be pleasant to others ; but it would be rash to take it as 
a guarantee that we shall not, before another year be over our 
heads, witness a campaign in which Prussian officers will certainly 
not be fighting in the French ranks.”— Times. 

“The King of Sweden has congratulated the Emperor upon the 
victory of the French at Puebla ”!!!— lb. 

“Speaking of present alarms from France, it is hardly possible, 
in sailing up the Phine, not to be astonished at the impudence of 
her pretensions to that frontier, and not to confess that Germany 
has good reason for fearing and hating her ambitious neighbour. 
Scarcely a town does the steamer touch at which has not been 
besieged again and again by French armies .”—Saturday Review. 

Whilst the Germans have great cause to blush at the truckling 
and trimming subserviency of their rulers, it may afford them some 
consolation to reflect that, if report be true, more than one female 
scion of its sovereign houses refused to connect herself with the 
triumphant adventurer. 

Io sposa d’un tiranno, 

D’un empio, d’un crudel, d’un traditore, 

Che non sa, che sia fede, 

Non conosce dover, non cur a onore! 

S’io fossi cosi vile, 

Saria guisto il mio pianto 

No, la disgrazia mia non giunse a tanto. 

Metastasio. 


Ambition is perhaps— 


La seule passion digne d’une princesse 
Mais je veux que la gloire anime ses ardeurs, 
Qu’elle mene sans honte au faite des grandeurs 
El je la desavoue, alors que sa rnanie, 

Nous presente le trone avec ignominie. 

CoRNETLLE. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


19 


The Spaniards are the only people who have manifested a proper 
spirit of distrust and detestation towards the family by which they 
were circumvented, insulted, and plundered. 

“Letters from Spain announce, that the animosity of the people 
against France is as violent as ever. That ill feeling found vent a 
short time ago in demonstrations nearly approaching to hostilities 
against M. Barrot, the ambassador of France at Madrid. I am told 
that an astounding incident recently took place at a bull-fight. 
Somebody brought a full-sized lay figure representing the Emperor, 
in order to have the pleasure of seeing it tossed about and dragged 
in the dust by the furious bulls. It is added that the people 
applauded most frantically. Such behaviour is to be regretted, 
especially in the interest of the Spaniards themselves.”— Liberal 
Paper. 

“Is it not true that at this moment alguazils and soldiers are 
forced to encamp before the French Embassy at Madrid, to save its 
windows and tenants from the persecutions which were inflicted 
upon St. Stephen ? ”— II. 

“From 25,000 to 30,000 State Papers, stolen from the Spanish 
nation by the elder Bonaparte, are still detained at Paris by the 
younger.”— lb. 

It is important that the public should be occasionally reminded of 
the circumstances which led to the unexpected and untoward resus¬ 
citation, in the person of the Man of December, of the imperial 
throne. 

That the three great continental powers should have renounced 
the wise and glorious policy which enabled them in 1813-15 to 
emancipate Europe from Corsican thraldom, is a fact not less 
marvellous than melancholy. It is not surprising that the 
Bonapartes should wish to tear in pieces the solemn compact which 
consigned them to merited obscurity. Our leading journal has 
adopted the same tone, and seems inclined to propose a vote of 
universal confidence in the man of December. 

“Alluding to the treaties of 1815, Prince Napoleon said they 
should only be mentioned to be execrated.”— Times. 

“The age is past when Europe could endure the outrage of a 
Holy Alliance.”— lb. 

“The old distrust of Europe towards France exists no longer. 
The policy and conduct of the Emperor have destroyed it for ever. 

b 2 


20 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


Foreign powers understand that this pacific and liberal policy 
responds to the wants and necessities of all parties.”— lb. 

Its opinions, however, are often fantastic and fluctuating. It is 
occasionally the accuser, and at other times the apologist, of the 
French ruler. It strenuously maintains his right to the imperial 
crown, and yet brings facts and inferences every day under our 
notice which demonstrate its own conviction that he is unworthy to 
wear it. We find it admitted that, from the inauspicious moment at 
which republican credulity became his dupe, he began to form 
plans for the overthrow of his unsuspecting victims. 

“It may be said that every single act of Napoleon III. and of 
M. de Persigny for the last thirteen years has been directed to one 
object—the establishment of a Bonaparte dynasty on the throne, 
with all the power and splendour possible in these times. To this 
great end everything has been made to work. War, peace, alliances, 
treaties, royal visits, coercion, conciliation, the restrictions on the 
press, soft words to the priesthood and deadly blows to the Papal 
power, threatening manifestoes and soothing pamphlets—have all 
had one object,—to force, or to coax, or to frighten, or to flatter 
France into forgetting all Legitimist mummies and all Pepublican 
phantoms, and accepting an Imperial throne as completely as 
England, or Sweden, or Spain have accepted the changes in their 
houses.”— Times. 

There seems to be a plain and unmistakeable antagonism between 
Bonapartist France and all the other dynasties of Europe. Whilst 
the liberation of Germany and the overthrow of Napoleon were 
celebrated at Berlin, his successful invasion of France, which was 
a prelude to an attack upon all independent potentates, was 
triumphantly commemorated at Paris, where unprincipled ambition 
and unfathomable astuteness are devising plans of revolution and 
aggrandisement. 

“ The sovereign who is now at feud with all that is wise and 
liberal in his country is still the representative of a family which 
fought the battle of Prussia against the great power of Napoleon, 
and added to the history of Germany the most splendid events of 
later days. The War of Liberation has just been celebrated by one 
of those gatherings which are never forgotten by those who have 
witnessed them. Just fifty years ago King Frederick William called 
upon the Prussian people to rise against the invader who for seven 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


21 


years had held the land in vassalage. The nation obeyed his call 
with an enthusiasm which has never yet died away. Even at this 
day one is continually reminded of the fervour which took possession 
of the mind of the whole people at the thought of freeing themselves 
from French dominion. The War of Liberation is the staple subject 
of drama and romance, of military legend and popular song.”— 
Times. 

“ Until nations took the wars of Europe into their hands there 
was no real resistance to the arms of the Great Conqueror. In his 
Italian campaign, at Austerlitz, at Jena, he was opposed only to 
Courts and armies, and he triumphed easily. When he won a 
battle the whole country was at his feet. He had only to terrify 
beaten emperors and kings, and all that they governed was at his 
mercy. But when he had worked his will with princely personages, 
the time came that he had to deal with nations , and then he fell. The 
despised Spaniard set the example ; it was followed by the fanatical 
and barbarous Russian, and enlightened Germany was the last to 
profit by the instruction. At last, however, the generation of which 
the Knights of the Iron Cross formed a part was roused to do what 
five years before had been done by Spain and Portugal. The year 
1813 beheld a king and a people in strict unity, battling against the 
evil powers which then reigned in Europe .”— lb. 

“The annual banquet in commemoration of the return of the 
Emperor Napoleon I. from Elba has just taken place in the salons 
of Catelain, in the Palais Royal, M. Belmontet, Deputy of the 
Legislative Body, presiding. The assembly was numerous, con¬ 
sisting of soldiers of Marengo and the other great battles of that 
period. All the different branches of the Grand Army were repre¬ 
sented. Opposite the President was the bust of the Emperor, 
< crowned with a branch of the famous 20 Mars.’ M. Billet, 
formerly a cuirassier, proposed the first toast, ‘To the Emperor 
Napoleon, who on the 20th of March brought back to France the 
principles of 1789.’ ”— Ih. 

“If all that precedes be true we see that an alliance between 
England, France, and Austria, with a view to remodelling the map of 
Europe , is at once desirable and possible. Such an alliance would meet 
with no serious resistance. Russia, crippled from the effects of the 
war in the Crimea, engaged in a deep social transformation, without 
credit, and without internal security, could not long resist the efforts 


22 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


of the Poles supported by the sympathies and the co-operation of the 
three greatest powers of Europe .”—Bonapdrtist Taper. 

“ The necessity of a reorganization of Europe, which seems 
inevitable, or rather providential, to the eyes of the philosopher and 
the publicist, cannot, it is true, be viewed in the same light by 
practical politicians. The statesman does not proceed a priori to the 
realisation of a preconceived system ; but he who possesses the rare 
and precious gift of political perspicacity should seize the propitious 
occasion the moment it is presented, and should make no mistake as 
to the importance of events, nor the opportunity for intervening and 
for promoting the principles of which, by the very force of circum¬ 
stances, he has become the depositary and the armed representa¬ 
tive.”— Ib. 

“This course is now more indispensable than ever, at an epoch 
when on all points of the globe the truth is obscured by so many 
conflicting passions. France must be strong and calm in the interior 
in order to be always in a position to exercise her legitimate 
influence on behalf of justice and progress, the triumph of which is 
often endangered by the exaggeration of extreme parties.”— Ib. 

“France, then, must be strong; she must concentrate all the 
elements of her power, and avoid disseminating them. She will 
have , perhaps , great blows to strike , and she must not allow herself 
to be led away from the capital interests which are at stake in 
Europe by enterprises distant and at least premature.”— Ib. 

“A clever writer has shown that as Royalism means merely 
monarchy, and as France is governed by a monarch under the name 
of Emperor, the Siecle , while it calls upon the constitution to vote 
against the Royalists, is itself monarchical, either from conviction 
or resignation, for, under the existing system, it could not exist a 
day if it propounded doctrines contrary to the principle of monarchy; 
and by ‘ crushing the Royalists ’ it can only mean decreeing the 
deposition of Louis XVI., and of every King of France up to the 
time of the Carlovingians. These are the divisions which at home 
make the strength of the Imperial Government.”— Times. 

“The French Emperor is evidently hesitating to decide whether 
the probable failure of the Polish insurrection calls on him to appear 
before Europe as the champion of order, or whether its probable 
success makes it more desirable to show himself as the champion of 
great ideas .”—Saturday Review. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


23 


“A great many people have called, yesterday and to-day, at the 
Palais Royal, to leave cards on Prince Napoleon, in testimony of 
admiration for his speech on behalf of Poland. The Opinion 
Nationale pretends, and the belief is shared by a good many people, 
that Prince Napoleon spoke in accordance with the real sentiments 
of the Emperor, and that the more cautious policy of which 
M. Billault was the organ will not he long adhered to .”—Daily 
News . 


Libero sempre 

Non e il pensier liberamente expresso, 

E talor ancor la vilta si veste 
Difinta audacia. 

Alfieri. 

“ There are people who believe that the Emperor is willing to see 
the effect produced out of doors by his cousin’s fervid appeal—to 
feel, as it were, the pulse of the public before committing himself to 
any more decisive policy—to see, in fact, how far the French people, 
who sympathize to a man with Poland, would approve another war 
with Russia, and who also believe that the speech, which every one 
has read, was known and not disapproved in the highest quarter 
before it was delivered. I have reason to think that those persons 
are correct, and though some of His Majesty’s Ministers seriously 
contemplated for a moment preventing its publication in the 
Moniteur , they concluded rightly that its suppression would not be 
well viewed in the highest quarter.”— Times. 

The Czas considers that those who have destroyed liberty at home 
will give no help to Poland. 

“ For some time past the King of Prussia and the Court have 
endeavoured to revive old hatreds and warlike recollections between 
France and the people of Prussia. Reviews and sham fights on the 
Rhine, celebrations of anniversaries of victories over the French 
arms, which, by the way, the allies of Prussia rather than the 
Prussian army gained for her, a press attacking France, and often 
offensive to the Emperor—such has long been the absurd and un¬ 
wise policy of the Prussian Court and Government towards a 
powerful neighbour supposed to conceal territorial ambitions. The 
conduct of France has, under such circumstances, been dignified 
and moderate. Frenchmen have witnessed old blundering generals 


24 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


playing at soldiers on the Rhine with a smile of satisfaction; and 
the harmless newspaper squibs have passed unanswered.”— French 
Paper. 

“Does any man believe, that if France went to war with Russia 
on behalf of Poland, Polish independence would be obtained ? What 
the first Napoleon avowed that he could not do, in the plenitude of 
his power, the third Napoleon is not now in the position to accom¬ 
plish. The war would begin about Poland, but Europe generally 
would soon be involved in it, and in more pressing dangers or more 
enticing objects Poland would soon be forgotten. Two or three 
nationalities would suffer enormously, whilst the Polish would gain 
nothing. ’ ’— Times. 

“I do not think I am in error in saying that if France be left 
alone, and decide—which is not so improbable as may be supposed 
—on acting by herself, and giving her blood and treasure in 
rescuing Poland from the great oppression under which she is held, 
she will think that all this blood and treasure should not be lavished 
without compensation. Where that compensation is to be sought for, 
is another question.”— lb. 

“What gives Russia strength in her attitude towards the 
European Powers—what gives to the Notes of Prince Gortschakoff 
their scornful and haughty tone, is his knowledge of the want of 
accord between France and the other Powers. Let France, on her 
own authority, declare^that justice must be done to Poland, and her 
voice would be far more potent than all the collective and am¬ 
biguous Notes that have been grudgingly penned by the Powers. 
M. de Noailles concludes by saying that it is essential to know 
whether France really desires that Poland shall be restored, for 
there can be but two solid points of support in the Polish question 
—namely, the will of France , and the persevering heroism of the 
Polish insurgents.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ There is, however, another agency at work, the evil influence of 
which is exerted in the specious cause of the insurgents,— French 
gold , French officers, French Zouaves , are all enlisted in the struggle , 
and the Polish malcontents continue to maintain this disastrous 
contest in the hope that the crowned Camillus of the Tuileries 
may throw his sword into the scale on their behalf; and what, then, 
we inquire, has civilization to gain by the continuance of this war ? 
There is the certainty of a desolated land, of ruined cities, burning 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


25 


homesteads, cowardly assassinations, and the perpetration of every 
outrage which marks the bitterest phases of international and inter¬ 
necine war.”— Press. 

The tranquillity which France enjoyed during the reigns of its 
restored monarchs, could never disarm the hostility or earn the gra¬ 
titude of the Imperialist malcontents, who were determined, at any 
price, and through any crime, to restore the odious era of despotism 
and degradation. The principles of the Bourbons were those of 1789. 
It was under the influence of a Bourbon monarch and his ministers 
that they were inaugurated, and would, but for the triumph of 
anarchical violence, have been fully and faithfully carried out. The 
great object of the Man of December is to sow the seeds of jealousy 
and distrust amongst the powers of Europe, and to turn every 
political crisis to the best account, for his personal aggrandisement, 
and the perpetuation of his dynasty. It is his interest and wish to 
keep Europe in a state of perplexity and perturbation. 

“Qui ex numero civium, dementia aliqua depravati, hostes patrice 
semel esse ceperunt, eos cum a pernicie reipublicse repuleris, nec 
vi coercere, nec beneficiis placare possis.”— Cicero. 

Upon my tongue continual slanders ride, 

Stuffing the ears of men with false reports, 

I speak of peace, while covert enmity 
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world, 

Shakespeare. 

“ He knew well how to give a fair appearance to the most dis¬ 
reputable actions. ’ ’— Plutarch. 

“ Necminori studio regis atque provincias per terrarum orbem alii 
ciebat.”— Suetonius. 

“According to the Paris correspondent, who is said to be in con¬ 
nexion with one of the most influential persons in France, the 
programme of the Emperor of the French is as follows:—‘A great 
Germany under the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine. (The restoration 
of the German Empire ?) A kingdom of Poland, to be composed of 
the Polish possessions of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Austria to 
relinquish the province of Venice, which is to be a free port, but to 
retain the Quadrilateral, it being required for the protection of the 
Tyrol. As an indemnification, a member of the Imperial Austrian 
family to reign in the new kingdom of Poland, or in the Danubian 


26 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Principalities. The left bank of the Ehineto belong to France.’ ”— 

Times. 

“ His object is to hold on till the favourable moment comes for 
France to pick a quarrel with Prussia, for which, of course, any 
pretext will serve.”— lb. 

It is most meet we arm as ’gainst the foe ; 

For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom 
(Tho’ war, nor no known quarrel were in question) 

But that defences, musters, preparations, 

Should be maintained, assembled, and collected, 

As were a war in expectation. 

Shakspeare. 

“Those who deem the situation of affairs highly critical, and the 
commencement of a great war in 1863 probable, go upon two ideas. 
One of them (and this is the hope of the reactionary party) is that 
Austria may be induced to enter into a coalition with Pussia and 
Prussia, which would be the signal, they make no doubt, of war 
with France. The other is that Napoleon III., unable to withstand 
the temptation of the pretext, will make Prussia responsible for the 
non-success of diplomatic remonstrances at St. Petersburg with 
respect to the Polish question. This latter is certainly the most 
probable hypothesis.”— lb. 

11 The present King, from the moment of his accession to the 
throne, has endeavoured to disarm his parliament of the only privi¬ 
leges for which a representative body can reasonably be supposed to 
exist .”—Morning Post. 

“The Prussians will tolerate much, and, we think, they are yet 
far from having exhausted their stock of patience; but so long as 
the present struggle is maintained, the King is turning away from 
him the hearts of his subjects, which a few short years ago were all 
his own, and is swiftly gliding down that slope on which, when they 
have once embarked, kings so rarely stop, but which in the end 
leads to the loss of crowns .”—BelVs Weekly Messenger. 

“The great dishonour that is brought upon a people by having 
their dearest rights swept away in the full face of Europe, and being 
told that free speech and self-government are nuisances of which the 
Court and the best society are tired, must sink into their hearts far 
more deeply than into ours.”— Times. 

“ The French empire is restored, and, though it announced itself 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


27 


as identical with peace, it has shown itself to be not indisposed to 
war. Strong in the sympathies of Europe and in the patriotic 
support of his own people, the King of Prussia might encounter 
even a war with France without serious grounds of apprehension. 
He seems determined to deprive himself of both.”— Lb. 

“William is a silly, stiff old soldier, cajoled and bullied by the 
people with whom he lives, but well-meaning and honest in his way. 
They do not dislike him personally, and would be sorry to do him 
any injury.”— Saturday Revieio. 

“No salvation for Prussia save in many battalions, entailing, of 
course, provision for a host of aristocratic officers.”— Liberal Paper. 

“The King is in a state of great irritation and excitement, as is 
natural to suppose, in consequence of the strong symptoms of 
discontent exhibited since the appearance of the ordinances, and 
such a mental state is by no means favourable to the use of the 
Carlsbad waters, which are very powerful in their effects.”— Times. 

“ It has come to open war between Government and Chamber. 
It is not likely that either party will give way.”— lb. 

“Prance would get the Phine provinces as readily as the wolf 
gets the nearest lamb of a flock. Unless the other Powers interfere, 
France can take these provinces whenever she likes.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“ I hear that at all the Prussian fortresses, both on the Phenish 
frontier as well as on the Baltic, the greatest activity is in secret 
being displayed in providing them with all species of war stores.” 
—Liberal Paper. 

“The Prussians are the least revolutionary people in Europe. 
They are loyal at heart,—they have no taste for republicanism, and 
there is no rival dynasty to divide their attachment to the throne. 
They have a reverence for authority, and exhibit a submissiveness 
to the class of Government officials which to Englishmen appears 
slavish, though it is far from deserving so harsh an epithet.”— 
Times. 

< ‘ The worst danger of all, is the attitude which the Government 
has assumed in the Polish question, and which threatens to bring it 
into trouble with foreign Powers, while depriving it of the support 
of its own people.”— Lb. 

“ The King appealed to his people, but he would not accept their 
judgment. He still adhered to his policy, and offered no atonement 


28 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


whatever for his own infraction of the compact between Sovereign 
and people. As soon as it became manifest that he had no change 
of policy to hope from the new Parliament, he adopted, under the 
advice of evil counsellors, a course of conduct which we believe to 
be unexampled.”— lb. 

“In it the King completely identifies himself with his ministers, 
and places himself in the most decided opposition to the Chamber, 
towards which he uses language which can hardly be described 
otherwise than as highly injurious, not to say insulting. The 
sensation produced among the deputies by the document was most 
painful and irritating, as was easily to be discerned in their sudden 
movements and in the expression of their countenances. They 
heard it completed in profound silence.”— lb. 

“ The Prussians do not wish to quarrel with their Sovereign more 
than they can possibly help.”— Saturday Review. 

“There is something that particularly moves indignation in the 
sight of a country distracted, disgraced, and endangered by the 
perversity of one man. The King of Prussia, acting by one or two 
complaisant servants—we cannot call them counsellors—has suc¬ 
ceeded in bringing the great kingdom which he governs into a state 
of confusion such as has not been seen since it was delivered from 
the French. All the hopes that were conceived at the beginning of 
his reign have passed away, and been followed by despondency and 
anger.”— Times. 

‘ ‘ The King has alienated from himself the sympathy of a Govern¬ 
ment well disposed towards him on dynastic grounds, and has ren¬ 
dered the task of interfering to save him from the consequences of 
his own folly, one of extreme difficulty.” —Liberal Paper. 

“Such being the state of things here, you will not wonder that 
the Prussians feel themselves humiliated in their own eyes and in 
those of Europe. They are conscious that under the present regimen 
their country's legitimate mfiuence is sacrificed both in and out of 
Germany. M. von Bismark, of whom such great things were prog¬ 
nosticated by his too-partial friends when he came into office, has 
certainly contrived to bring his country as low as it well could be 
brought.”— Times. 

“With respect to foreign affairs, the speaker declared any advan¬ 
tageous action of Prussia to be now out of the question, weakened 
as she is by her internal discords; to this fact it is unnecessary to 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


29 


seek the testimony of enemies; what friends say abundantly suffices ; 
it was hut the other day that the Carlsruhe Journal declared, that, to 
take any step in behalf of the hegemony of Prussia would now be an 
act of madness. Nowhere is a voice uplifted for the Prussian 
Government, save in some Paris journals, which, as is well known, 
possess Berlin correspondents.”— lb. 

“ The Polish insurrection might at its outbreak be considered as a 
mstter of interior policy; but the intervention of Prussia has ren¬ 
dered it an European question. The disapprobation of the conduct of 
Prussia has been unanimous. Prussia might have convinced herself 
that she committed a great mistake by seeking to establish between 
Prussia and Bussia a solidarity which does not exist.”— lb. 

“ The Convention of the 8th of February has created a false state 
of things between Bussia and Prussia. If it were conceived in the 
spirit indicated it may have grave consequences.”— French Paper. 

“ This King seems to have studied the history of the Stuarts and 
the Bourbons, that he might extract all the conceit, and pedantry, 
and obstinacy, and selfish pride, and intellectual weakness he found 
there, while carefully eliminating all the gaudy virtues and kingly 
courtesies which allured to them, with all their faults, a certain 
devoted and chivalrous loyalty.”— Times. 

“ One would think he might go out into the highways and by¬ 
ways and find as good ministers as the present. Most of them are 
so notorious for incapacity that the first news of their appointment, 
now nearly a year ago, was greeted by the public with contemptuous 
merriment.”— lb. 

“Berlin has been twice disturbed by riots of a very ominous 
character; and on the last occasion barricades have actually reared 
their menacing and ragged outlines in its streets. On Saturday 
night these emeutes were renewed by a mass of discontented and 
angry people, estimated at several thousand strong.”— Scotsman. 

“ The King of Prussia has hastened to conclude with the Bussian 
Emperor a Convention the object of which is to help him in reducing 
once more to slavery the gallant people who have again risen against 
his Government.”— Times. 

“ That the Prussian Government should have become an accom¬ 
plice in these atrocities has roused a feeling in the heart of every 
Frenchman which words can hardly describe.”— lb. 

“ It may be that the King of Prussia will hereafter thank foreign 


30 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES? 


nations for the vehemence with which they have criticised his Con¬ 
vention with the Russian Government. The universal outbreak of 
indignation has perhaps saved him from going too far and com¬ 
mitting himself to a policy from which there is no retreat.”— lb. 

“War against Russia would be a European calamity. It would 
mulct Prussia of the left bank of the Rhine, simply because it had 
the bad luck to have an old honest fool of a cavalry officer for a 
king, and it would throw back, perhaps for long years, the rising 
freedom of Russia .”—Saturday Review. 

11 When the Emperor of Russia planned in secrecy a sudden 
occupation of the towns of Poland, and a midnight swoop upon all 
those of the male population who had been carefully catalogued as 
entertaining any affection for the language or nationality of their 
race, he committed an error from which even Machiavelli would 
have dissuaded him. He threw away the advantage which cowardice 
may offer to a tyrant, and he made it less dangerous to be a rebel 
than to be an obedient serf.”— Times. 

The infatuation of the European monarchs and ministers must be 
blind and besotted indeed, if they believe in the pacific professions 
of the French ruler, and the disinterestedness of his policy. 

“II me fit tant de protestations d’amitie, que je commencai a le 
craindre plus que jamais.— Crebillon le Fils. 

On fait souvent plus pour les gens que l’on craint que pour ceux 
qu’on aime.”— lb. 

L’esser vicini al lido 
Molti fa naufrager. Scema la cura, 

Quando cresce la speme 
E ogni riscliio e maggior per clii nol feme. 

Mutastasio. 

The smaller powers of Germany have everything to dread from the 
undisguised animosity of British Liberalism, as well as from the 
cupidity of Imperialist ambition. 

“It seems as if by far the shortest and easiest way of settling 
German affairs would be to mediatize thirty-four out of its thirty-six 
sovereign princes .”—Saturday Review , 1860. 

“It must be confessed, that the sovereigns of Europe wear verv 
bad spectacles.”— Guibert. 

The English press, at the outset, unanimously denounced a 
felonious outrage, which has proved, under its aspiring and arrogant 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


31 


founder, a source of unspeakable calamities to France and to the 
world. 

“We are told, forsooth! that one benefit France has already 
derived from this attentat —‘the crisis of 1852 is averted /’ Not so— 
only hastened forward, anticipated, and realized; for what worse 
than what has happened could have been feared, even by the most 
timorous, from 1852 ? All the institutions of the country overthrown 
—all constitutional authority dissolved—all legality abrogated—the 
streets of Paris a human slaughterhouse—innocent strollers and 
spectators on public walks, and from drawing-room windows wantonly 
massacred—hundreds of the most honourable and eminent men of 
the nation imprisoned like felons, some of them handcuffed—thirty- 
three departments in a state of siege—and, as the Bonapartist 
advocates are forward to admit, half the surface of the country 
reeking with blood and fire! What worse, we ask again, could 
have been feared from ‘ ’52 ’ ? But why was any convulsion to be 
apprehended in ‘ ’52 ’ ? 

“ Considering the nature of the midnight outrage committed by 
the President and his gang, it seems a curious coincidence that the 
instrument chiefly employed in burglary and housebreaking in Paris 
—described in the dictionary as grosse pince de voleur —is technically 
known to the thieves and the police as a Monseigneur ; and never 
before, we venture to say, was any Monseigneur employed so 
flagitiously, or for the moment more successfully. Mats patience /”— 
Quarterly Review , 1852. 

“ If the parties who so foolishly, so blameably, concurred in electing 
Louis Napoleon, had elected any one else, or if Louis Napoleon had 
been content to abide by the conditions of his election, a new Presi¬ 
dent—Cavaignac, Lamartine, Changarnier—would have been elected 
in ‘’52,’ with, in all human probability, no disorder, because there 
would be neither pretext nor motive for disorder. All the mischief, 
whatever it may be, is chargeable to no other cause but Louis 
Napoleon’s perjury to the Constitution, and his treason to the State. 
He has inflicted on the country, in December ‘’51,’ the certainty of 
calamities which he pretends might happen in May ‘’52,’ and the 
very chance of which was created by his own treachery and ambition. 
His pretext is no better than the proverbial absurdity of Gribouille , 
qui se jetta dans Veau de peur de la pluie —he has plunged the country 
into the abyss of December for fear of a shower in May. We have 



32 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


seen the number of killed in those two days in Paris reckoned at 2,400. 
The executions by the Revolutionary Tribunal in the two years prior to 
the fall of Robespierre were only 2,700; and the massacres of 
December ‘’51,’ if not so ferocious, were more wanton and more 
indiscriminate than those of September ‘’92.’ We say nothing of 
thousands of prisoners, and thousands of transported! Could ‘ ’52,’ 
have done worse?”— Ih. 

“ In the meantime, like all bad imitators, he (Louis Napoleon) 
exaggerates all that is monstrous in his monstrous originals. The 
2nd December was a parody of the 18th Fructidor, only in larger 
proportions. Instead of 10,000 troops, which was the whole force of 
Augereau, Louis Napoleon occupied Paris with about 60,000. The 
Directory on that night arrested 16 of their opponents; Louis 
Napoleon, 78. The whole number of persons whom the Directory 
sent to Guiana was 335. Those whom Louis Napoleon has seized, 
and has either already sent away or detains in the frightful prisons 
of Rochefort and Brest, and the other ports on the Atlantic, are 
already counted by thousands ; the lowest estimate that we have 
heard is 8,000, the highest 12,000, and we believe the latter to be 
nearer to the truth. A single department, the Nievre, has furnished 
more than a thousand. A traveller through the middle of France in 
the latter part of February, found the roads swarming with prisoners 
on their way to the coast; some in long strings on foot, others piled 
together in diligences, in caleches, and in carts. The Directory 
published the names of their victims ; those of Louis Napoleon are 
known to himself or to his agents; among them may be many of the 
persons supposed to have perished in the massacre of the 5th 
December. All that is known is, that about 3,200 have since dis¬ 
appeared from Paris; they may have been killed in the Boulevards, 
and thrown into the large pits in which those who fell on that day 
were promiscuously interred ; they may have been among the 
hundreds who were put to death in the courtyards of the barracks, 
or in the subterraneous passages of the Tuileries; they may be in the 
casemates of Fort Bicetre, or in the bagnes of Rochefort, or they may 
be at sea on their way to Cayenne .”—Edinburgh Review , 1857. 

The following paragraph, which appeared in the Examiner at 
that critical juncture, exhibits a masterly summary of the motives, 
as well as of the measures, which led to the consummation of that 
ominous catastrophe. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


33 


“ No ruler was ever raised to power upon grounds more temporary 
or ephemeral than Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. There were not a 
dozen persons in the world who thought of him as the future Sove¬ 
reign of France on the first day of the revolution of February, 1848.* 
It was but the accident of the times and the mutual vengeance of 
parties, which after that event caused him to be turned to as a 
useful instrument. A crowd of factions combined to award him the 
dictatorship expressly that he might perform the hangman’s office 
in the new Republican constitution. The middle class wanted an 
executioner to decimate and terrify the turbulent folk who lived by 
labour, and who had suddenly proposed, in consequence of the 
revolution, to labour no more except upon their own terms. The 
Communists wanted an unscrupulous instrument to avenge them of 
Cavaignac, and to humble the bourgeoisie. The upper classes 
welcomed a prospect of absolute power in any shape as the fittest 
prelude for their own peculiar preparation of that great specific. 
But there is not one of these factions, so recklessly desirous once of 
sacrificing even the freedom and dignity of their common country to 
a mere vengeance of class, which does not shrink from the terrible 
avenger they have raised, and stand aghast to see his power con¬ 
solidated into a tyranny far more mean and more galling than any 
they had thirsted to escape from.f 

‘ 1 An allegiance which was but the momentary expression of fear, 
of rivalry, or of spleen, the audacious object of it has construed into 
a permanent abdication in his favour on the part of the French 
people of all freedom, all intellect, all dignity, all power. The 
country overrun with his myrmidons, the whole of France entangled 
for the time in a perfect network of prefects, soldiers, and police, no 
Frenchman now dares to open his mouth in private communication 
with his neighbour, much less to carry on any public communication 
by means of open speaking or the press. A terror lies heavy upon 
the land; in the midst of which mock appeals are made, forsooth, to 

* 1 have lately been assured by a respectable and trustworthy republican, that the 
Chamber did not contain ten thorough Bonapartists at the crisis of the coup de 
mmrtre . 

f "Where bloody victims, yet but green in earth— 

Lie fest’ring in their shrouds.” 

Shakespeare. 

c 


34 OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 

universal suffrage to obtain sanction for the different steps by which 
it pleases the tyrant to mount to the imperial crown. 

‘ ‘ But the elevation of this man from the rank of an untitled to 
that of a titled despot is really not one calculated to excite repug¬ 
nance or opposition. His enemies can see in it no accession to his 
power, while in the fact of that power reaching its culminating point 
of arrogance and assumption they may behold a nearer approach to 
the sure moment of its toppling over. Thus, friends and foes alike 
join in impelling Louis Napoleon to the assumption of the Empire ; 
while he himself falls more deeply than ever into the grand mistake 
of supposing that the suffrages which formerly raised him to a 
temporary dictatorship remain not less zealous and sincere to achieve 
for him a dictatorship permanent and hereditary. We will be bound 
to say there is not one other man in France capable of making that 
mistake. There is not one other, we firmly believe, who can bring 
himself to expect the safe continuance, during even a few years, of 
the present gross and brutal tyranny. But as yet none see exactly 
how the liberation is to be brought about. To tide over the present 
and reserve the future is the uppermost thought in every mind. It 
was singularly conspicuous the other day in the conduct of the 
Senate, even that miserable (Senate of Louis Napoleon’s own 
creation, which, called to regulate the succession in decreeing the 
Empire, refused to engage their allegiance beyond the life of the 
present head of the family and his possible offspring, thus throwing 
the claims of the other members of the Bonapartist race into that 
limbo of nonentity and doubt where it is the fate of so many pre¬ 
tenders to the French crown to pine. 

“As to the future Emperor himself, he at least preserves the 
consistent bearing of the autocrat. He scorns to assign a reason for 
any act he perpetrates. He disdains to consult any authority 
capable of inquiring into or discussing a reason with him. He 
makes a tour through the French provinces, out of which he has 
transported his active enemies, in wliich he has awed dissentients 
into silence, and where it is but natural that such as remain, having 
the use of a voice, should raise it in acclamation at the Prefect’s 
bidding. On this he calls together the Senate to decree that he 
shall be Emperor; his so-called Chamber of Kepresentatives he 
leaves scornfully out of the question, and a day is forthwith appointed 
for the people to signify at their respective Mairies their acceptation 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


3,5 


of the new Sovereign. It would have been impossible to accomplish 
a revolution in which so little free choice was left to the people, or 
so little of even courteous remonstrance to the educated and func¬ 
tionary classes. Even church and army are passed over in this 
redoubtable act of manufacturing an Emperor, in a way, we should 
suspect, as little gratifying to their vanity as it is calculated to 
ensure their enthusiastic adhesion. 

“ Eor the paucity of words and prudence of expression with which 
the chief of the State and his councillors have heralded and accom¬ 
plished this revolution we are somewhat recompensed by the lengthy 
and laboured report of the Senators’ Commission, and its aged 
lawyer, Troplong. The notable feature of this report is the horror 
which the worthy Senators are made to avow for the Republic. No 
weaker animal ever triumphed over a dead lion’s carcase with more 
brutal logic than the Senatorial Commission over that of the defunct 
Republic. Even the first election of Louis Napoleon to the Presi¬ 
dency is styled in their State paper, singularly enough, ‘ a bitter 
sarcasm.’ From this we are to understand that the people who 
elected M. Bonaparte to be the First Magistrate of the Republic, and 
who imposed upon him the oath to be true to that Republic—the 
imposers of the oath, as well as the taker of it—were, according to 
these Imperial Senators, indulging merely in a ‘bitter sarcasm.’ 
We have heard of the history of a people written by themselves. 
Here is certainly a chapter in as curious a piece of autobiography as 
a country’s records can show. 

“The most comical part of the report of Messieurs the Senators, 
however, occurs where he who drew it up puts on his spectacles and 
adopts the tone of Montesquieu. ‘ The Republic,’ says the report, 
is a form of government that can never suit a great people—a great 
people demanding security for industrial enterprises, and, above all, 
exacting credit for the foundation of its prosperity. It can only find 
these things under a monarch.’ Who ever heard of credit as a thing 
born and bred in republics ? Of course neither Venetians nor Dutch 
ever managed to conduct their commercial enterprises without 
resorting to the indulgence—without calling in aid the ‘bitter 
sarcasm ’ of a military dictator! All this fine argument, too, is spun 
out upon the assumption that France and the world have but two 
alternatives in the matter of government—a republic or a dictator¬ 
ship. The noble Senate of M. Bonaparte’s creation altogether 


36 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP r THE BONAPARTES ? 


ignores the fact of such a thing as a constitutional monarchy having 
ever existed. Not being able to mention the word as in the least 
applicable to the mockery set up by Louis Napoleon, they do not 
mention it at all. There is not a syllable of the country’s liberties, 
past, present, or future—not even a hint of aught in the way of profit 
or honour to accrue to the nation from the Empire. There is to be 
a good police, and there is to be peace; and, if the Erench are good 
boys, they shall have fetes , and processions, and splendid reviews. 
The steeples are to be gilt, and the generals embroidered. Mean¬ 
while the censorship is to be fixed on the press, education to be 
delivered over to the Jesuits, deportation and even death to be 
judged against Frenchmen, not only without a jury, but without a 
trial—in short, absolute tyranny is to dominate in everything, 
unlimited and uncontrolled, except by servile bodies without any 
power of resistance derived from law or from opinion,—and all this 
Ave are now to see finally stereotyped for perpetual delectation of the 
French during successive ages and reigns of a Napoleonic dynasty ! 
Credat Judccus ! However such a sorry infliction might have been 
tolerated as a necessity for a day, no rational man can look upon it, 
thus proposed as a permanency, with any other thought than of 
execration and derision.”—( Examiner , not long after the coup de 
meurtre.) 

i ‘ When his power was grown to such a height that it was scarcely 
possible to demolish it, and had a plain tendency to the ruin of the 
constitution, they found out, when it was too late, that no beginnings 
of things, however small, are to be neglected; because continuance 
makes them great, and the very contempt they are held in gives them 
that strength which cannot lie resisted.”— Plutarch. 

“Many people, who observed his prodigious expense, thought he 
was purchasing a short and transient honour very dear; but, in fact, 
lie was gaining the greatest things he could aspire to, at a small 
price.”— Ibid. 

u Some exclaimed, that he plainly affected the tyranny, by openly 
reproducing those honours of his uncle which the laws had con¬ 
demned to darkness and oblivion. This, they said, was done to 
make a trial of the people, whom he had prepared by his caresses, 
whether they would suffer themselves to be entirely caught by his 
venal benefactions, and let him play upon them, and make what 
innovations he pleased.”— Ibid. 


OUGHT FBANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


37 


“ It is notorious tliat France covets tlie left bank of the Rhine, and 
highly placed Austrian politicians believe tbat sbe will soon attempt 
to get possession of it, should Prussia continue to play into tbe bands 
of Russia. Every now and then men in office talk of tbe 1 Federal 
obligations ’ of Austria, but tbe impression on my mind is, tbat 
this Government is not inclined to afford material support to a Power 
which has rarely or never displayed sympathy for this country when 
it has been in distress. During tbe last war in Italy the Imperial 
Government applied to its Federal ally for assistance, but tbe Prus¬ 
sian Cabinet coldly expressed its resolve to remain strictly neutral. 
Should France make an attack on Baden, the Emperor Francis 
Joseph will doubtless conscientiously perform bis Federal duties, but 
be will hardly feel disposed to sacrifice either men or money for the 
benefit of an ambitious rival.”— Times. 

11 Tbe indicision and double-dealing of tbe Cabinet of the Tuileries 
seem to prevent Austria from acting in an open and straight-forward 
manner. ’ ’— Press. 

llio’ I do hate him as I do hell’s pains, 

Yet, for necessity of present life, 

I must show out a flag and sign of love, 

Which is but sign. 

Shakespeare. 

11 The Emperor has received tbe congratulations of the Emperor of 
Austria and the King of Prussia on tbe capture of Puebla.”— French 
Paper. 

Francis Joseph’s inauguration into the college of constitutional 
monarchy has been ushered in under most unpromising auspices. 
One of bis first acts is to compliment a tyrannical upstart, who 
basely robbed him of a hereditary and valuable province by a 
violation as unprovoked as it was unprincipled. What would the 
Austrian monarch have said if Juarez had congratulated the Man 
of December upon the victory of Solferino, the conquest of Lom¬ 
bardy, and the dethronement of Francis Joseph’s nearest kinsmen 
and most faithful allies ? At all events, he might have remained 
silent and neutral— 

“ What’s Mexico to him and he to Mexico ?” 

In fact, his conduct on this occasion is so derogatory and degrading, 
that I begin to think my memory deceives me in reference to the 


38 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


history of the last few years. It must have been perjured and per¬ 
fidious Juarez who dared 

A Mexique d’etablier son Empire, 

Jouir de sa fortune, et de son attentat, 

Et changer a son gre la forme de l’etat. 

CoilN'EILLE. 

f 

It must have been Juarez who sent a Mexican army to attack 
the Austrians in Italy, and expel them from a territory to which 
they possessed an indefeasible and unquestioned right, in order 
to divert the Mexicans from the contemplation of their own 
discomfiture and disgrace. It must have been Juarez who has 
been keeping all Europe in a state of anxiety and alarm. It 
must have been Juarez of whom when he landed in France as an 
adventurer before his elevation to the presidentship, “ Mr. Kir wan, 
an English barrister, an eye-witness of his bearing, states that his 
look when in danger, was so dejected and crestfallen that the very 
market women called him un poltron and un faux bravo , and that one 
of them, a vehement Juarist, greatly scandalized, exclaimed that he 
had the colour and complexion 1 d'line feuille morted ”—Saturday 
Review. 

The Austrian statesmen, by sanctioning such an ignominious pro¬ 
cedure, and “ licking the hand oft steeped in Austrian blood,” as 
well as by courting and craving diplomatic honours at Paris under 
such a regime , seem to have forfeited the high character assigned to 
them by the most enlightened and honest of modern historians. 

“ The public men of Austria are much accustomed to subordinate 
their zeal for the public service to their self-respect. To undertake to 
disbelieve a statesman of the Court of Vienna, is the same thing as 
to undertake to disbelieve an English gentleman.”— Iunglahe , i. 477. 

“Self-respect” should have prompted them to keep aloof from 
the man who had shown no “ respect ” for the honour or the happi¬ 
ness of their country. The statesmen and chief nobles of England 
have equally forfeited their character for honesty and high minded¬ 
ness. 

“ It is still the habit of the English gentleman to think that his 
personal honour is no part of the property of the State, and that 
even for what may seem the public good he ought not to do violence 
to liis self-respectR — Junglahe, ii. 119, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


30 


Every enlightened and honourable French patriot must have 
arrived at a very different conclusion when he heard that the Duke 
of Cambridge, Lord Raglan, and Lord cle Eos had fraternized with 
his oppressor; and that the Palmerstons, Russells, and Gladstones, 
after having attacked and anathematized “Bomba,” were the 
applauders and abettors of Bonaparte. 

The Prussian monarch and his councillors and courtiers have been 
not less guilty of sycophancy and servility. 

Two sudden thoughts seem to have struck King William, first’ 
that of swearing an eternal friendship with the Man of December, 
and applauding all his crimes and all his cruelties; secondly, that 
of alienating from his person the affections of a most loving and 
loyal people. If the patience of the Emperor of Austria were 
exhausted, and that he inveighed against the cupidity and cunning 
of the French ruler, King William would coldly exclaim— 

Quel projet faisait-il, clont vous puissiez votrc plaindre? 

And the reply might be 

J’en a souffert beaucoup, et j’avais plus a craindre, 

Un si grand politique est capable de tout, 

Et vous donncz les mains a tout ce qu’il resout.— Corneille. 

The newspapers seldom fail to announce, day after day, some fierce 
and fatal indication of that mutual distrust and j ealousy which prove 
a source of present weakness and future danger to the three great 
Powers, whose common welfare and security depend so much upon 
their being cordially united, to counteract the insidious designs of 
their wily and watchful enemy. How strange, that, whilst Austria 
remains convinced of the Man of December’s secret but steadfast 
hostility, she should still maintain a doubtful or even hostile attitude 
in reference to Prussia; whilst the Czar, on the other hand, with 
equal pertinacity, keeps aloof from all intimacy with his Austrian 
neighbour, whose interests are so much identified with his own. 

“ The chronic antagonism of the two great German States 
lias been lately revived by some irritating squabbles .”—Saturday 
Review . 

“As Prince Metternich is on a very friendly footing with the 
Emperor of the French, he may, perhaps, persuade himself that His 


40 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Majesty lias no interested motives for his present policy in regard to 
Poland, but he will hardly be able to convince his Government that the 
French Monarch ds less disingenuous now than he was two or three years 
ago.” — Times . 

“ There is a perfect understanding between the British and Austrian 
Governments, but it is very evident that this Cabinet has no faith in 
the professions of friendship which are made by the Emperor Napoleon .”— 
lb. 

‘‘ The gulf between Austria and Russia is now wider than ever ; 
a settled jealousy prevails between the two Courts and the two 
autocracies. 5 ’— lb. 

“ It is not easy to obtain an insight into what passes at this Court; 
but my intimate knowledge of persons and things enables me to state 
that strenuous efforts are now being made to bring about a rapproche¬ 
ment between the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Emperor Alex¬ 
ander. The former is frequently reminded that the late Emperor of 
Russia assisted Austria in her day of need, and every now and then 
it is hinted to him that the moment for paying olf the debt of 
gratitude has come. During the last seven years the Emperor of 
Austria has repeatedly made advances to the Russian monarch ; but 
they have always been scornfully rejected. The last attempt at a 
reconciliation was made in October, 1859, and I well recollect that 
the Russian Emperor then declined to meet the Austrian monarch, 
who had offered to go to Warsaw.”— lb. 

“ During the last few days M. von Bismarck has evinced a desire to 
be on better terms with Austria, and two reasons are given for the 
sudden change in his policy. The one is, that he is disgusted with the 
double-dealing of the Emperor Napoleon; the other, that he has come 
to the conclusion that neither Russia nor Prussia can with safety 
bid defiance to public opinion.”— lb. 

‘ £ When Count Thun presented his letters of recall, on the 21 st of 
March, the Czar desired him to express to the Emperor Francis 
Joseph his best thanks for his ‘loyal neutrality.’ ”— lb. 

‘ ‘ The news received from Galicia is by no means good. The political 
ferment increases from day to day, and the Lieutenant-General Count 
Mensdorff is said to complain much of the machinations of French 
revolutionary agents.' 1 ’— lb. 

“ Few persons are here to be found who doubt that the Poles have 
been stimulated to revolt by French agents and assistance, or that 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


41 


French, arms and money, and even, it is reported, French officers 
have been liberally supplied to them.”*'— Times. 

* Instead of inveighing- against Russian cruelties, the Eldest Son of the Roman 
Catholic Church ought to blush (if he were capable of blushing) at the misery which 
he is inflicting upon the victims of his tyranny in Egypt. 

“ the Paris government journals have been thrown into a state of great excitement 
by the appearance of a dispatch from the Turkish government on the subject of the 
Isthmus of Suez Canal. The document, which is published in the Courrier da - 
Diman che, and signed by Aali Pacha, condemns the scheme in the strongest terms. 
It states that no government at all solicitous of its honour or independence ean 
countenance a scheme of the kind, which would place all the important points on 
the Syrian frontier in the hands of a foreign power ; and denounces the conduct cf 
M. de Lesseps, Avhom it describes as having ‘ snatched 50,000 men forcibly from the 
bosoms of their families to employ them on the work of his canal.' ”— Times. 

“The question of forced labour for the works of the Suez Canal presents a neio 
and terrible feature. Typhus of the most virulent kind has made its appearance in the 
villages of Upper Egypt , whence the chief supply of labour has been drawn. I am 
told on excellent authority that it first broke out on the river among the return levies 
on their way home, who, exhausted by fatigue and exposure during the term of their 
service, closely crowded in the boats, and poorly and insufficiently fed, were in the 
condition which experience has found will foster disease. Others were attacked 
after reaching their villages, and the disease is now rapidly spreading. It will be 
remembered that the plague was generated in Egypt, during the long years of 
oppression to which the inhabitants were subjected, the consequent state of abject 
misery and privation in which they had lived, and which prepared their constitu¬ 
tions to receive illness in its moat terrible forms; and it is therefore much to be 
feared that, unless measures be taken in time, what is now called typhus may de¬ 
generate into plague. How grave the consequences would be I need not point out.” 
—Ib. 

The Russian Emperor is endeavouring to put down a revolt. The Second of 
December is inflicting far more atrocious sufferings upon the unoffending subjects 
of a distant realm. 

“ It is calculated that the system of forced labour is perpetually applying to, and 
making slaves of, not less than sixty thousand persons. As many as twenty thousand 
are continually employed upon these works, these being relieved by a fresh twenty 
thousand every month, and being then obliged to return to their homes out of their 
own means, often to a great distance. Meanwhile it is calculated that as many as 
forty thousand are continually either on the march or preparing for it in order to 
take their own share in the work. This is nothing less than a system of slavery ; 
and a system, too, maintained in direct opposition to the orders of the Pasha of 
Egypt himself, who had forbidden the system of forced labour as distinctly as the 
Sultan himself.”— Times. 

“The course of action pursued by the French government in regard to the 
Isthmus of Suez Canal is most extraordinary. It would seem that no written 


42 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONArARTES ? 


“It is natural tliat the countries nearest to France should he those 
most disquieted by the rumours of intended aggression that have 
lately been rife.”— Times. 

“Under the heading of ‘Warning,’ the Cologne Gazette has just 
published an article declaring its belief in the possibility of a French 
army being soon marched into the liliine Provinces. It claims credit 
for its prediction, on the ground of its having always discountenanced 
alarmist reports, when those have been current respecting a war 
with France. While doing so, it says it has invariably declared that, 
when real danger should be at hand, it would be the first to uplift 
its voice. ‘ To-day,’ the mater adds, ‘’we redeem our pledge and give 
warning. Our well-weighed opinion is that, since 1815, the 
prospect of a war with France has never been so near as now.’ ”— lb. 

“In the course of conversation, he observed that Count Pechberg 
was almost sure to fall into the same error as his predecessor (Count 
Buol), ‘whose half measures were most pernicious to Austria.’” 
—Ib. 

It would have been well for the confederated members of the Holy 
Alliance if they had remembered the fable of the bundle of darts, 
which could not be broken until they were separated. The father 
of each would have said on his deathbed to them all, 

Jc vais ou sont nos pores; 

Adieu; proinettez moi de vivre comine freres 
Que j’obtienne de vous cette grace en mouranl. 


answer has been given by the French representative here to the note of the Forte. It 
would, indeed, be difficult to answer satisfactorily the very reasonable objections 
put forward by the Turkish Government in that note; and it is not wonderful, 
therefore, that the French Government should abstain from committing themselves 
to writing. The alternative pursued, therefore, is to act upon the fears and appre¬ 
hensions of the Turks by verbal threats and a systematic course of intimidation. Such 
it seems is the language of the French Ambassador here through the medium of his 
agents, and such there is no doubt is the tone of the French agents in Egypt. The 
Turks, in the absence of active support from other quarters, are pursuing the pro¬ 
crastinating policy to which they cling when a question becomes difficult to be dealt 
with. They still declare their determination not to depart from the spirit of their 
Note; but in the meanwhile the works in Egypt are progressing, and nothing is 
done here to bring the question to a termination one way or the other.”— Times. 

In the case of each of these helpless victims, a verdict of “ wilful murder ” should 
be returned against M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, to whoso cunning, cruelty, and 
cupidity, they have all been wantonly and wickedly sacrificed. 




OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


43 


They acted for a time on this principle, and whilst they did so— 

Le faisceau resista; 

Do ces dards joints ensemble un seul no s’eclata. 

But when the Man of December achieved a pernicious and per¬ 
fidious triumph over the laws and liberties of France, ho seems to 
have said,— 

II faut que je vous montre 
Ce que ma force peut en seniblable reeontre 
Ou crut, qu’il se moquait—oil sourit, mais a tort, 

II separe les dards , et les rompt sans effort. 

* * * * 

Leur amitie fut courte, autant qu’elle etait rare; 

Le sang les avait joints—l’interet les separe ; 

L’ambition, l’cnvie, avec les consultants, 

Dans la succession entrent cn meme terns. 

* * * * 

Les princes desunis sout tous d’avis contraire 
L’un veut s’accommoder—1’autre n’en vcut rien faire ; 

Tous perdirent leur bien, et voulurent trop tard 
Protiter de ces dards unis, et pris a part. 

La Fontaine. 

The acquiescence of the other sovereigns in the dethronement of 
Charles X. paved the way for the obliquity and obtuseness of their 
subsequent policy, and for the unhappy and unhallowed elevation of 
the most astute and audacious enemy to the integrity and indepen¬ 
dence of their respective dominions. 

It is refreshing to contemplate the dignified attitude of free and 
happy Switzerland, whilst the great Powers were crouching and 
cringing at the usurper’s feet. 

“ During the late aggressions of Louis Napoleon, the Swiss Federal 
Government preserved a happy mean between servility and bravado, 
which would have done credit to the wisest Cabinet in Europe.”—■ 
Saturday Review. 

The shrewd and sagacious author of the preceding lucubrations 
seems to have arrived at a correct judgment on every point but one, 
namely, the probable continuance of the Imperial incubus, which has 
now, during twelve years of disquietude, encumbered, as a dead 
weight, the peace and prosperity of Europe. But it may be observed, 
in the first place, that he had probably underrated the amount of 


44 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


tameness, and even of taciturnity, with which, the French people 
submit to a galling and ignominious thraldom. When Henry IV., 
who knew them well, was told, that, by destroying his relations and 
his friends, he might raise his bastard children to the throne, but that 
he would run the hazard of ruining the State, and perhaps of losing 
his life, the answer was: “You are mistaken, the French accustom 

m 

themselves to anything .’’ {Le Labour ear. ) He understood their national 
character better than Isnard, who tells us, that ‘‘ trailer tous les 
peuples en freres, ne faire aucune insulte, n’en souffrir aucune 
ne tirer le glaive quo pour la justice; ne le remettre dans le fourreau 
qu’apres la victoire; enfin etre toujours pret a combattre pour la 
liberte, toujours pret a mourir pour elle—et a disparaitre tout entier 
de dessus le globe plutot quo de se laisser re-enchdiner —voila le 
caractere du peuple Francois!” And yet this great nation has, since 
these eloquent words were uttered, twice succumbed to the yoke of 
Corsican adventurers, in whom astuteness and audacity were substi¬ 
tuted for virtue, morality, and justice! But (2) the patience and 
pusillanimity, with which such atrocious tyranny has been submitted 
to, is, in some degree, palliated by the dread naturally entertained of 
seeing the horrors of the Revolution renewed, which had involved the 
entire country in carnage and confiscation. 

The folly and infatuation of the Republican leaders, in recalling 
the Bonapartes to France, were as conspicuous as the foresight and 
firmness of the allied sovereigns in excluding them for ever from its 
throne. The Provisional Government, indeed, cherished at first a 
well-grounded suspicion, and when Louis Bonaparte repaired to 
Paris, “On pria le visiteur importun de retourner immediatement 
en Angleterre.” (Molinari, p. 169.) “ Les Republicains politiques, 

et en particulier M. Ledru Rollin, essayerent de parer au danger 
qu’ils voyaient poindre de ce cote, en demandant qu’il fut excepte 
seul du rappel de la loi d’exil, qui frappait les membres de la 
famille Bonaparte.”— lb. 

But this judicious suggestion was overruled. When that family 
was installed in high places, and loaded with riches, after the pre¬ 
sidential election, it might well have been said to the Republican 
party— 

Yotre prudence est endormie 
De traiter magnifiqueraent, 

Et de loger superbement, 

Yotre plus cruelle ennemie. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


45 


Faites la sortir, quoiqu’ on die, 

De votre riche appartement, 

Ou cette ingrate insolemment 
Attaque votre belle vie. 

Moliere. 

And the fortunate holder of the grand prize in the national lottery, 
for whose pride nothing is too splendid or too sumptuous, might have 
exclaimed, in reference to the palaces, parks, and revenues so 
lavishly awarded to him, 

J’aime superbement et magnifiquement, 

Ccs deux adverbes joints font admirablement. 

The time-honoured adage that there is “ nothing new under the 
sun,” is peculiarly applicable to the department of history; in the 
annals of which, a precedent may frequently be found for the crimes 
and cruelties of more recent days. Thus we perceive, in reference to 
the perfidies and proscriptions of 1851, a striking analogy in many 
features of the outrages perpetrated by the Eoman triumvirates, as 
well as in the credulity and infatuation of not a few eminent states¬ 
men and orators, who became their dupes and their victims. “ Cicero, 
old as he was, suffered himself to be imposed upon by this [artful] 
man (Octavius), solicited the people for him, and brought many into 
his interest. His friends blamed him for it at the time; and it was 
not long before he was sensible, that he had ruined himself, and given 

up the liberties of his country.Above two hundred persons 

were proscribed, who had been pitched upon for a sacrifice [the 
Eoman tyrants slew and exiled their hundreds, but the French 
despot his thousands] . . . “ Thus rage and rancour entirely stifled 
in them all sentiments of humanity; or, more properly speaking, 
they showed, that no beast is more savage than man, when he is 
possessed of power equal to his passions.”— Plutarch. 

“ Under the Eepublic, the institutions of France had not shrivelled 
up into a system, which subordinated the vast interests of the State 
to the mere safety and welfare of its ruler. The legislative power 
and the control of the supplies w r ere in the hands of an assembly 
freely elected; and both in the chamber and in print men enjoyed 

the right of free speech.France was not at that time a source 

of disturbance to Europe.”— Kinglalce. 

What Plutarch tells us concerning Pisistratus and Solon, is strik- 



46 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONATARTES ? 


ingly applicable to the relation between Ledru Eollin and the Man 
of December — 11 He counterfeited so dextrously the good qualities 
which nature had denied him, that he gained more credit than the 
real possessors of them, and stood foremost in the public esteem in 
point of moderation and equity, in zeal for the present government, 
and aversion to all that aimed at a change. With these arts 
he imposed upon the people; but Solon soon discovered his real character , 
and was the first to discover his insidious desiyns. . . . Solon addressed 
himself to the citizens, sometimes upbraiding them with their past 
indiscretion and cowardice, sometimes exhorting and encouraging 
them to stand up for their liberty. Then it was that he spoke those 
memorable words, ‘ It would have been easier for them to repress 
the advances of tyranny, and prevented its establishment; but now 
it was established and grown to some height, it would be more 
glorious to demolish it.’ However, finding that their fears pre¬ 
vented their attention to what he said .... he exclaimed, ‘ I have 
done all I could to defend my country and its laws.’ ”— Plutarch , 
Solon . 

“ When Ledru Eollin was overpersuaded, he might have said, as 
By 11 a did with respect to Cresar, ‘ Vincerent, ac sibi haberent; eum, 
quern incolumem tantopere cuperent, quandoque partibus, quas 
secum simul defendissent, exitio futurum.”— Suetonius. 

“ That same is a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave. I will 
no more trust him when he leers, than I will a serpent when he 
hisses. He will spend his mouth, and promise, like Brabler the 
hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretel it, that it is pro¬ 
digious, there will come some change; the sun borrows from the 
moon, when he keeps his word.”— Thersites , apud ShaJcespcare. 

“ Ledru Eollin at once suspected what was really the case, that 
it was a matter of very little consequence to Mons. 13 . whether an 
oligarchy or a democracy prevailed in France; that it teas his 
business to (jet himself recalled by any means whatever .”— Plutarch, 
Alcibiades. 

There can be no doubt that he arrived, as national representative, 

* "When he talked, the flow of his ideas was sluggish, his features were opaque. 
In the assembly his apparent want of mental power caused the world to regard him 
as harmless—and in the chair of the President he commonly seemed to be torpid.— 
Kinglake. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


47 


at Paris, under tlie power and prompting of measureless and 
merciless ambition. 

Et preparait des lors ce qu’on voit aujourd’hui. 

Corneille. 


Let the long hid seeds 
Of treason in thee now shoot forth in deeds 
Hanker than horror—and thy former facts 
Not fall in mention, hut to urge new acts— 

Conscience of them provoke thee on to more. 

* *- * * 

These arc too light; fate will have thee pursue 
Deeds, after which no mischief can be new— 

The ruin of thy country ! Thou wert built 
For such a work, and born for no less guilt, 

What tho’ defeated once thou’st been, and known, 

Tempt it again. That is thy act, or none. 

-* * * * * 

Make all past, present, future ill thine own, 

And conquer all example in thy one. 

Ben Jonsox. 

The democratic party was lulled into a state of fatal security by 
his solemn asseverations of hearty adherence to their principles, 
when he became a candidate for the highest office in the State. “ Je 
me devouerais tout entier, sans arriere pensee, a l’affermissement 
d’une republique sage par ses lois, lionnete par ses intentions, 
grande et forte par ses actes. Je mettrais mon honneur d laisser an 
bout de quatre am d mon successeur le pouroir affermi, la liberU intacte , un 
pr ogres reel accompli .” 

The wise Republicans, as well as the foolish, appear all to have 
slumbered and slept. It is marvellous and unaccountable, that 
Cavaignac or Ledru Bollin should not have requested some attached 
and acute friend who had access to the presidential palace of intrigue 
and conspiracy, to watch the proceedings of the artful and aspiring 
adventurer, whom the latter had so jealously and so justly dis¬ 
trusted— 

Find their windings out, 

And subtle turnings, watch their snaky ways. 

***** 

Learn, too, each new accomplice they draw in, 

Who else are likely; what those great ones are 


48 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


They do not name; what ways they mean to take; 

And whither point their hopes, to war or ruin 
By some surprise ; explore all their intents, 

And what you think may profit the Republic 
Acquaint me with. 

Ben Jonson. 

The machinations for the overthrow of the government, which he 
had so solemnly sworn to maintain, were carried on without scruple 
or compunction, and amid daily reiterations of cordial allegiance to 
the one and indivisible Republic. 

Tener nascosto 

Sotto un zelo apparente un empio fine, 

Ne fabricar, che su V altrui mine. 

Metastasio. 

Non e fra voi 

Dunque il mancar di fe colpa agli Eroi ? 

E vero 

Ma la cura piu grande oggi e l’impero.— lb. 

The Man of December well knew that “calamities inflicted upon 
the rich, or upon such as seem to be fortunate, are not only viewed 
with indifference by the mob, but even give pleasure to the malig¬ 
nant and worthless, out of envy towards their superiors, and those 
who are happy .”—Herodian vii. 

It was from this motive that he inflicted upon France the curse of 
universal suffrage, and courted popularity amongst the brutal and 
the base. 

“No living man, perhaps, except Prince Louis Bonaparte, had 
passed the hours of a studious youth, and the prime of a thoughtful 
manhood, in contriving how to apply stratagem to the science of 
jurisprudence. It was not, perhaps, from natural baseness that his 
mind took this bent. The inclination to sit and sit planning for the 
attainment of some object of desire—this, indeed, was his nature; 
but the inclination to labour at the task of making law an engine of 
deceit—this did not come per force with his blood. Yet it came with 
his parentage. ..... For years the prince pursued his 
strange calling, and by the time his studies were over, he had become 
highly skilled. Long before the moment had come for bringing his 
crooked science into use, he had learnt how to frame a constitution 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


49 


which should seem to enact one thing and really enact another. He 
knew how to put the word ‘jury ’ in laws which robbed men of their 
freedom. He could set the snare which he called ‘ universal suffrage.’ 
He knew how to strangle a nation in the night-time with a thing he 

called a ‘ Plebiscite.’.He could maintain friendly 

relations with a man, and speak frankly and truthfully to him for 
seven years, and then suddenly deceive him.”— Kinglake. 

“We are required to “ contract the field of vision, and going back . 
to the winter of 1851, to glance at the operations of a small knot of 
middle-aged men, who were pushing their fortunes in Paris.” This 
knot of middle-aged men consisted of Prince Louis Bonaparte, Moray, 
Maupas, or De Maupas, Persigny, properly Fialin, and Achille St. 
Arnaud, formerly Jacques LePoy. To pile up events between these 
men and the bloody past, to shelter them from the personal peril to 
which the public memory of their crimes exposed them, to make the 
country, which they had outraged, forget her shame, to gain such 
sanction as the pure name of the Queen of England could give 
to acts, which no pure heart could regard without abhorrence, was 
the real object for which the concert of the four Powers was broken 
up, and the fair prospect of peace, which that concert afforded, was 
exchanged for the certainty of a dreadful war.”— lb. 

In the case of the Coup cVJEtat he behaved—if Mr Kinglake’s 
account is correct—“much in the same manner, remaining shut up in 
the Elysee, while more daring men, at whose head was young Fleury, 
did the work for him; not leading the soldiers himself as he had 
vowed he would, but, like a peaceful citizen in grievous peril, send¬ 
ing them all his gold, and having a large body of cavalry always 
ready, in case of miscarriage, to escort him to a place of safety.” 
—Ib. 

A venal crew of dupes and desperadoes was gradually enticed and 
enlisted through the medium of bribes and blandishments, of pledges 
and protestations. In Persigny he had a most appropriate alter ego , 
almost as skilled an adept as himself in the arts of crime, cunning, 
and cajolery— 

One that has phrases, figures, and fine flowers 
To strew his rhetorick with, and doth make haste 
To get him note, or name, hy any offer, 

Where blood, or gain, he objects. 

Ben Jonson. 

D 


50 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 

Man of December. 

Quiconque me plaira, n’a besom que de moi. 

Corneille. 

Persigny. 

Seigneur, je crois, tout juste, alors qu’un roi 1’ordonne. Ib. 

Les rois de leurs faveurs ne sont jamais comptables; 

Ils font comme il leur plait, et defont, nos semblables. Ib. 

Man of December. 

The state thou holdst already is in talk—- 
Men murmur at thy greatness, and the nobles 
Stick not, in public, to upbraid thy climbing 
Above our uncle’s favour, or thy scale, 

And dare accuse me from their hate to thee. 

Ben Jonson. 

u Yoila le confident de vos plaisirs, et le gardien de votre sagesse; 
il faut lui rendre justice; si vous le payez pour vous faire liair, il 
ne vole pas vos gages. Nous ne pouvons faire un pas qu’il ne 
gronde. Bientot il va nous peser Fair, et nous mesurer la lumiere.’’— 
Marmontel. 

Les coupables soutiens de ces complots atroces 
Sont tous vos partisans declares ou secrets; 

Partout le noeud du crime unit vos interets. 

Voltaire. 

Whilst to his thirst for rule he wins the rout 
(That’s still the friend of novelty) with hope 
Of future freedom, which, on every change, 

That greedily, tho’ emptily expects 

Ben Jonson. 

Queerenda pecunia primum. We must, in the first instance, 
secure to ourselves power and pelf. It will be time enough after¬ 
wards to become the apostles of fidelity to oaths, and attachment to 
existing institutions —virtue post nummos. 

For our reward then, 

First, all our debts are paid—dangers of law, 

Actions, decrees, judgments against us, quitted. 

This house is yours, that land is his, these waters, 

Orchards, and walks, a third’s—he has that honour, 

And he that office. Such a province falls 
To Persigny, to Morny this, and that 
To bold St. Arnaud. France itself to me. 

Ben Jonson. 






OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES V 


51 


Noble confederates, thus far is perfect, 

Only your suffrages I will expect, 

And all the voices you can make by friends 

To my election. Then let me work out 

Your fortunes, and my own. Meanwhile all rest, 

Seal’d up and silent, as when rigid frosts 
Have bound up rivers, and the country sleeps, 

That, when the sudden thaw comes, we may break 
Upon ’em like a deluge, bearing down 
Half France before us, and invade the rest 
"With cries, and noise, able to wake the urns 
Of those are dead, and make their ashes fear. 

The horrors that do strike the world, should come 
Loud, and unlooked for. Till they strike, be dumb.— lb. 

A prince’s power makes all his actions right, 

We, whom he works by, are dumb instruments, 

To do, but not enquire. His great interests 
Are to be serv’d, not seen into. 

The way to rise is to obey and please.— lb. 

II senato 

Non e piu quel di pria; di schiavi e fatto 
Un vilissimo gregge. 

Metastasio. 

E de malvagi 

II numero maggior; gli unisce insieme 
Delle colpe il commercio ; indi a vicenda 
Si soffrono tra loro, e i buoni anch’ essi 
Si fan rei coll’ esempio, o sono oppressi.— lb. 

The senators all struck with fear and silence 
Save those whose hopes depend not on good means, 

But force their private prey from public spoils. 

Ben Jonson. 

» 

On the horrors enacted during the Coup d’Etat, which have con¬ 
demned their perpetrator and his accomplices to everlasting infamy, 
it is as needless, as it would be painful, to dwell. 

Je les peins dans le meurtre a l’envi triumphans, 

Et la ville noyee au sang de ses enfans, 

Les uns assassines dans les place publiques, 

Les autres dans le sein de leurs Dieux domestiques 
Le mechant par le prix au crime encourage. 

Corneille. 







52 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ On the 4th that monstrous slaughter took place, from which 
arose the success of the Coup (VEtat, dripping ivith blood” — Victor 
Hugo , p. 86. 

If he had attempted to “smile without art, and win without a 
bribe, ’ ’ defeat and disgrace would have been inevitable. Self-interest 
was the only motive, which prompted him to ask the aid of his 
satellites and sycophants, and their sole inducement to grant it. It 
was thus that he was enabled to raise himself from the decennial 
presidentship to the imperial dignity. 

(7.—Most worthy, and my most unwearied friends, 

His lordship is turn’d instant kind, methiuks, 

I’ve not observ’d it in him heretofore. 

T. —’Tis true, and it becomes him nobly. 

M.— I 

Am rapt withal. 

T. — By heav’n he has my lives, 

(Were they a million) for this only grace. 

L. — Aye, and to name a man as he did me ! 

M. —And me—who would not spend his life and fortunes, 

To purchase but a look of sxich a lord ? 

* # * * * 

See, see! what troops of his officious friends 
Flock to salute my lord! and start before 
My great proud lord ! to get a lord-like nod! 

Attend my lord unto the senate house, 

Bring hack my lord! like servile ushers make 
Way for my lord! proclaim his idol lordship, 

More than ten criers, or six sounds of trumpets. 

T .— Now he will have pow’r 

More to reward than ever! 

C .— Let us look, 

We he not slack in giving him our voices. 

X.—Not I. 

C.— Nor I. The readier we seem 

To propagate his honours, will more hind 
His thoughts to ours. 

II .—I think right, with your lordship, 

It is the way to have us hold our places. 

S. —Aye, and get more. 

X. ^-More office and more titles. 

T. —I will not lose the part I hope to share 

In these, his fortunes, for my patrimony. 

Ben Jonson. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


53 


“The skill with which Napoleon has outflanked the advance of 
freedom, and defeated it from what were thought to be its own 
strongest positions, has no parallel in recent history.” —Saturday 
Review. 

“ Whatever may have been the case at former epochs, it cannot 
now be said of France that this is a period peculiarly fruitful in 
great characters, whose splendid abilities and conspicuous deeds 
have to some extent redeemed, if not effaced, their faults and their 
crimes.” —Saturday Review. 

There are two problems, which are both humiliating and perplex¬ 
ing. (1.) How came France to submit with so little resistance to 
so heavy a burden and so galling a yoke? and (2.) How it is that 
so great and glorious a nation has so long endured the continuance 
of unmitigated despotism, notwithstanding its intense and intolerable 
aggravations ? a despotism condemned in all other countries, by 
all writers endowed with honour and conscience, even when they 
(erroneously in my judgment) contend, that foreign governments 
ought to recognise and uphold it. 

Who would save them that have betray’d themselves ? — lb. 

He’s base that trusts his feet, whose hands are arm’d.— lb. 

“NO REBELLION WAS EVER BASER THAN THAT OF PRESIDENT 

Bonaparte against the Eepublic of which he was himself the 
chief magistrate ; nevertheless, it is our business to acknowledge 
him as Ten-Years President, Emperor, Brother of the Sun and 
Moon, or anything else he may please to call himself, so long as the 
title of the moment does not imply any jurisdiction within the 
British dominions! ! ! ” —Saturday Review. 

“We all remember the compromising zeal of the Sergent of 
Gendarmes, who, hearing a man, soon after the Coup P Et at, crying 
out, ‘ Le coquin, le voleur, le brigand ,’ &c., collared him, exclaiming, 

< Vous parlez du President V ‘ Non, Monsieur, je parlais de mon 
boucherd ”— lb. 

It is through the farcical, flagitious, and fallacious juggle of 
universal suffrage that the Man of December has become “the 
powerful ruler who is now the arbiter of the Continent, flattered 
alike by the Revolution and by Royalty.”— Times. 

“ It is undeniably true, that the language and proceedings of the 
Government justify the most opposite explanations of its designs 5 


54 


OUGHT FEANCE TO WOESHIP THE BONAPAETES? 


nor can it be denied that in France, and in Europe, the decision of all 
important questions is understood to rest ivith the Emperor . Educated 
and thoughtful men are not unlikely to despise oracular vacillation ; 
and they are stirred by feelings deeper than contempt when they see 
an irresponsible ruler endowed with arbitrary power. As the 
Empire , however , rests either really or ostensibly on universal suffrage , 
thought and education exercise no influence on public affairs A—Saturday 
Review. 

“ The exercise of that despotic power, which the French, to the 
astonishment of mankind , are still content to leave him, has produced 
its natural effect of making him more self-willed and obstinate.”— 
Press. 

“ One of the most melancholy effects of absolute power is, that 
the respect for law is gradually fading from the public mind, and 
that France is becoming gradually accustomed to absolute rule 
under a member of a family detested in France.”— Spectator. 

“ The people at large are rapidly losing, if they have not already 
lost, the small capacity for self-government which they had acquired 
under a succession of representative governments. If the existing 
regime lasts many years, they will retrograde to the point of political 
education at which they stood in 1815. It is a bad prospect for the 
French nation; it is a bad prospect for their neighbours; but it is 
one of the numerous boons for which the civilized world will stand 
indebted to the Saviour of Society.”— Saturday Review. 

Belying on the selfish devotedness of the renegades and ruffians 
who surround his throne, he defies and despises the enmity of his 
virtuous and high-minded antagonists, whilst he courts the favour 
of the ignorant and ill-informed. 

La prima arte del regno 
E il soffrir l’odio altrui. Giova al regnante 
Piii l’odio, che l’amor. 

Metastasio. 

‘ c But if it be expected, that commercial success will console the 
French nation for the loss of political liberty, it is a grievous error. 
It is impossible to convert a whole nation into cynical and selfish 
traders, and, least of all, the French nation. Unless the edifice is to 
be crowned with freedom it must and will fall. With the educated 
classes, whose opinion will always ultimately triumph , Imperialism has 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


55 


never been popular. They are not to be dazzled by the appearance of 
material prosperity, and they detest the system of repression under 
which they live.”— Saturday Review. 

1 1 It is madness in any nation to place its destinies in the hands of 
one man, but that conquest carries in its own bosom the seeds of its 
own failure and dissolution ; and the maintenance of acquisitions 
made by the most brilliant military successes is impossible in 
defiance of opinion.”— Times. 

“Napoleon III., like sagacious despots in all ages, preserves 
absolute power by appearing to be merely the agent of his 
people, labouring for their profit and glory.”— lb. 

u The Frenchman has shown that he confides in the Empire more 
than in the Parliamentary system which preceded it, and even the 
peasant ceases to hoard, and looks to the Imperial investments. 
With this natural inclination to a strong Government, the French¬ 
man is ready to judge favourably anything that it places before him, 
and by gratifying the taste and pride of the people Napoleon has 
completed that dominion over the French nation at which he has 
laboured since early youth.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ It was the boast of Homeric Jupiter, when taunting the minor 
gods, his offspring or his kinsfolk, that if they were all of them to 
lay hold of and tug at the end of a chain of which he held the other 
end, however hard they might try with a long pull, a strong pull, 
and a pull altogether, they would never be able to make him budge 
an inch.”— London Liberal Paper. 

“ It is the obvious policy and duty of every English minister to 
repudiate the modern French contrivance for constituting or over¬ 
throwing independent States. Nothing can be more convenient for 
an aggressive Power than a machinery by which a semblance of legal 
right may be added to forcible possession; but England, which has 
never recognized the supremacy of numbers in her domestic Con¬ 
stitution, can by no means admit, that a real or apparent majority 
has, in any case, the power to determine the fate of its country. The 
device has hitherto been tried only by rulers , who had previously secured 
the result , which they afterwards affected to derive from the will of the 
people. The Consulate, the Dictatorship of December, 1851, the 
First and Second Empire, were already established and practically 
irremovable, when they were ratified, under the direction of the 
Prefects, by the votes of the French peasantry. A more scandalous 


56 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


abuse of universal suffrage was perpetrated in the seizure of Savoy 
and Nice, after the war with Austria and the partial creation of the 
Kingdom of Italy. The inhabitants of both provinces were ignorant 
of the provisional bargain which was concluded at Plombieres in 
1858, nor was it thought necessary to consult their wishes when the 
Emperor Napoleon insisted on their cession, as the condition of his 
assent to the annexation of Tuscany and the Legations. It is well 
known, that the votes were packed and arranged hj official agents, and that 
the majority of those, who actually voted, were influenced hy a fear of 
offending rulers zvhom they were in any case destined to obey I—Saturday 
Review . 

“ The French s} r stem of government has provided no recognised 
field for political discussion. Even if all France had renounced the 
Bourbons, the House of Orleans, and the Republic, public writers 
who are unable to influence the course of public affairs are naturally 
tempted to investigate the bases of the Constitution or the dynasty.” 
—Ib. 

“No one in all France understands his countrymen better than 
Louis Napoleon, or can identify himself with their feelings with 
greater success. Thus, the chord which runs through the whole 
speech is a complaisant glorification of Emperor, Senate, Legislative 
Body, and people. Nothing reads better or more fair, yet we notice 
in these phrases the usual elasticity of expression. There is one text for 
for interference and another for non-interference; there is one 
authority for upholding treaties, and another for breaking them; 
there is warrant for intervention, whenever it is thought expedient, 
between Christians and Turks. It covers by anticipation future 
expeditions in the east; it brings within the lawful course of events 
such past acts as the cession of Nice and Savoy, and prepares an 
excuse beforehand for appropriations of a similar kind in future; 
lastly, it softens and justifies such wars as the one now going on in 
Mexico. Herein lies, unfortunately, the great flaw which makes it 
impossible to trust implicitly to the political conduct of France. When 
influence is to be secured, or when there are Savoys to be annexed, it is 
invariably done under cover of the loftiest principles and the most sounding 
words.”—BelVs Messenger. 

“Whatever may be thought of universal suffrage, even when 
seriously carried out, under these circumstances it seems but an 
amusing fiction.”— Times. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


57 


‘ ‘ The sort of universal suffrage under which the inhabitants of 
Nice had the happy privilege of handing over to a foreigner the 
birthplace of Garibaldi.”— Saturday Review. 

“M. Paradol uses the Boman question only as an occasion for 
protesting against the exclusion of Frenchmen from the conduct of 
their own affairs. Incidentally, it suits his purpose to expose the 
indecision and duplicity of the absolute ruler : but his real grievance 
is, not that 'power is misused, hut that it has been usurped.' 1 ' 1 — Ih. 

“ The doctrine that France has a vested right in the weakness of 
her neighbours—that she cannot allow them to prosper, lest her own 
prosperity should be rivalled—is perfectly intelligible in some 
quarters. It is the natural, out-spoken language of despotism; and we 
had much rather hear it than listen to hypocritical talk about the Empire 
being Peace, or about France making war for an idea.” — lb. 

It is impossible to witness without feelings of indignation and 
astonishment the coolness with which the Elect (by universal 
suffrage) of the French nation repudiates and reprobates, as regards 
Mexico, the very system through which he has been enabled to 
usurp his own elevation. 

“ We are assured on the same authority that the Mexican popula¬ 
tion is not fit for universal suffrage, ‘ for universal suffrage would 
again place us in our present situation, for the simple reason that the 
rogues and the ignorant are infinite in number ; that the majority can 
express public opinion only when there exists a certain equality 
among the voters and ‘ that it is the voice of the more wealthy and 
enlightened classes only, who have an interest in the maintenance of order, 
that should be heard.'' These are heavy charges, but there can be 
no doubt they are true. What the French Government thinks of 
their enormity may be inferred from the place they occupy in the 
Moniteur. The press of Mexico is, indeed, in a sad condition. If it 
criticize the policy of the Government, it rims the risk of suspension or 
suppression ; its editors are sent to prison (preventive imprisonment, 
I suppose); and the Mexican newspapers are so timid as to refuse 
to publish a collective note of the Diplomatic Body ‘ by no means 
flattering to the President and his Ministers.”— Times. 

The Man of December is well aware, that the universal suffrage 
scheme is an engine, which, in his hands, can always be instrumental 
in furthering the most selfish and sinister designs. It can either 
rive an oak or pick up a pin. It enabled him, by fraudulent 


58 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


manoeuvres, to usurp the government of entire Franco, and he also 
had recourse to it for separating Nice and Savoy from Italy in spite of 
the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants, whom 
his agents entrapped and intimidated. What would he say if three 
or four departments of his discontented and degraded empire were, 
through the same medium, to intimate their determination to 
separate themselves from manacled France, and to become united 
with free and independent Britain? We should in a moment see 
the difference between profession and principle, the districts would 
be placed under martial law, and the precedent of Savoy be laughed 
to scorn. 

It is to be feared that, amongst all classes of Frenchmen, there 
exist not the moral courage and exalted patriotism of former 
generations. 

Lat. These our times 

Are not the same, Aruntius. 

Ar. Times ? the men 

Are not the same. ’Tis we are base, 

Poor, and degenerate from the exalted stream 
Of our great fathers. 0 those mighty spirits 
Lie rak’d up with their ashes in their urns, 

And not a spark of their eternal fire 
Glows in a present bosom, all’s but blaze, 

Flashes, and smoke. 

Ben Jonson. 

“Ministerial parts are shifted backwards and forwards without 
the smallest gain in talent, reputation, or integrity .”—Saturday 
Review. 

“ M. Pelletan describes his countrymen as a degenerate race, 
caring for nothing but the gross material enjoyments that wealth 
and excess of civilisation can procure, squandering on dinners at the 
Cafe Anglais, and in ministering to the voracity of courtesans, money 
won at the lottery of the Bourse—caring for no literature save 
the prurient novels of M. Flaubert and M. Feydeau—careless of their 
personal dignity, and thinking politics a nuisance—and, as a finishing 
touch to the picture, he gives them all the low vices of Oriental 
sensualism—the soul of a lackey in the body of an ape. 

“ It is not to be expected, that a picture drawn in a prison should 
be very sunny and cheerful, but though M. Pelletan gives abundant 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


59 


proof that 1 all is yellow to the jaundiced eye,’ it were impossible for 
the most enthusiastic partisan of the present state of things, for the 
most bigoted admirer of the results of what is termed the reign of 
order, not to admit, that many of M. Pelletan’s delineations of the 
moral and social state of the French capital, of its intellectual apathy, 
of its political lethargy, of the decrepitude of its literature, of the 
condition of the press, combine photographic accuracy with all the 
pungency of satire. 

‘ ‘ Ho accuses the present system of having fostered more and more 
that fatal disposition, always too common in France, to regard the 
public service simply as an institution for the easy employment and 
relief of the idle and prodigal. He accuses the fashions and habits 
of the Court of having created luxurious ways unknown before even 
in the worst days of France, and having sent them down rank after 
rank to the lowest class in which the wife of any public functionary 
can live. 

“Studying the outward and inward aspects of the New Babylon, 
M. Pelletan sees only degeneracy and decay; hypocrisy and false 
economy working destructively hand in hand; sham and delusion 
under every fair exterior; a population dwindling and a criminal 
calendar swelling; a prodigality which may well be called profligate 
in its tastelessness, heartlessness, and recklessness ; a profligacy 
which has eaten into the very core of society ; letters and art 
extinguished or turned to pollution; youth fading into the premature 
old age of vice; domesticity abandoned; marriage falling into dis¬ 
repute, and degraded womanhood becoming the pet institution of tho 
day. Not since the satires of Juvenal has a more stern and sweeping 
bill of indictment been drawn up against the social life of a great 
city than that in which M. Pelletan denounces and exposes the Paris 
of 1862. 

“ ‘ Thought, says M. Pelletan, ‘ is dying in Paris. In primary 
instruction, France, the nation of Voltaire, of Moliere, of Montesquieu, 
of Descartes, marches in the rear of Europe.’ ‘ Genius has been 
extinguished, and talent soon follows.’ ‘I know,’ exclaims the 
author, ‘ of no calamity more bitter than that prostration of intelligence, 
that stagnation of public opinion, that monotonous and perpetual 
nothingness, the morrow always falling on the evening as the snow 
falls on the snow, and lays in silence a second shroud over the first 
winding-sheet.’ If it were possible, he declares, that the present 


60 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


condition of the public mind of France could last long enough, 
history would have to count another China in the universe. France 
has resigned her intellect, and, as an inevitable consequence, supersti¬ 
tion has taken its place. Philosophy is dead. But table-turnings 
and spiritualism are alive and active; and the Church miracles o^ 
of the middle age are revived and re-worshipped in France. 

“ It would be futile to deny, that, for the time at least, the literary 
genius of France is extinct. No language could be too severe for 
the present state of Parisian popular literature. Where unobjection¬ 
able it is stupid; where there is any gleam of talent it is simply 
base.”— Times. 

The repression of monarchical tendencies, far more than the resist¬ 
ance to democratic aggression, was the Man of December’s leading 
principle. All the ignorant, uneducated, envious, and desperate 
classes and parvenus were the votaries of his crime; all the men of 
probity, talent, and character were its victims. 

“ The party against which the Coup d’Etat was principally directed 
was called, half in earnest and half in mockery, the great party of 
Order. It was essentially monarchical, being mainly composed of 
Orleanists and Legitimists, who were content to accept the Kepublic. 
Amongst the leaders were Mole, Gruizot, Thiers, Odillon-Barrot, 
Dupin, Pemusat, Berryer, de Tocqueville, and the Due de Broglie; 
and it comprised almost all the contemporary celebrities of France— 
the statesmen, generals, orators, and authors whose reputation was 
European, and whose names it was perfectly ridiculous to associate 
with Socialism or Bed Republicanism. In fact, had the enemies of 
order really risen against the constituted state of things, this very 
party would have been the firmest supporters of the Chief Magistrate, 
as they were when the abortive attempts of the insurrectionists of 
June, 1848, were put down by Cavaignac after four days’ hard fighting 
in the streets. It sounds , therefore, paradoxical at least to say , that the 
suppression of this party was essential to the preservation of society —and 
not only its suppression, but the arrest and incarceration of all its 
influential members, to the tune of about 240 ex-Presidents of Council, 
ex-Cabinet Ministers, ex-Ambassadors, and actual Generals and 
Deputies. Such a collection of prisoners ivas probably never witnessed 
before, as was then hurried off in common police-vans to prisons like 
the Millbank Penitentiary; but what we have to do with for the 
moment is simply the effect of this startling proceeding upon social 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


61 


intercourse. That such an outrage could ever he forgiven or forgotten by 
the sufferers teas morally impossible. They would have been wanting in 
self-respect , they would even have virtually acknowledged the propriety of 
their treatment , had they submitted to any sort of compromise with its 
perpetrators. With rare exceptions , they have kept proudly and indignantly 
aloof from all communion with the Imperialists , whose circles are conse¬ 
quently destitute of everything that gives grace , brilliancy , and genuine 
attractiveness to a salon—Saturday Review. 

“ He may be despotic, illiberal, retrograde; but that he reigns by 
the will, and with the full assent of the majority of his people, is no 
idle partisan boast, but a sober, sad, humiliating fact. ,, — lb. 

“ Aristocracy of feudal parchment has passed away with a mighty 
rushing, and now, by a natural course, we arrive at aristocracy of 
the money bag. It is the course through which all European 
societies are, at this hour, travelling—apparently, a still baser sort of 
aristocracy—an infinitely baser—the basest yet known.”— Carlyle , 
French Revolution, ii. 370. 

“ There is only one of the chief actors who has not been openly accused 
of dabbling discreditably in the public securities or other speculations of 
the Bourse; and, if often and confidently repeated rumours may be 
credited, the Emperor has more than once been obliged to advance 
large sums to save the participators in his grand exploit—which we 
are forbidden to call conspiracy—from exposure and disgrace.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“ It may be said, and we fear with truth, that at the present time 
the best educated and most refined classes do not exercise the influence 
which they are justly entitled to. If it be so, it is one of the worst 
results of the Imperial system. The Emperor, whether from choice 
or necessity, has been debarred from the support and assistance of 
the best men in France. His Court and his party do not include 

* Je ne sais point en lftche essayer les outrages 
D’un faquin orgueilleux, qui vous tient a ses gages. 

Boileau. 

Etre franc et sincere est mon plus grand talent, 

Je ne sais point jouer les hommes en parlant— 

Et qui n’a pas le don de cacher ce qu’il pense^ 

Doit faire en cc pays fort peu dc residence. 

Moliere. 


62 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


any of the names which have shed lustre on French literature and 
statesmanship. His adherents are mere adventurers, distinguished 
only by fidelity to their master, and an insatiable appetite for places 
and pensions. They have been in politics what the speculators on 
on the Bourse are in trade—they have gambled successfully. It is 
a dangerous and corrupting example, and one which cannot fail to 
have a demoralizing effect on Parisian society. Something is known, 
and a good deal more is believed, of the rapacity and venality of the 
Imperialist party. They sit in high places, and live in sumptuous 
palaces, but are despised by all the educated classes. It is difficult 
to conceive a more humiliating spectacle for those Frenchmen who 
still feel for the honour of their country. But success always attracts 
some worshippers, by whatever means it may have been reached; 
and it may be believed, that the character of the party by which the 
Emperor is surrounded, is one of the most demoralizing influences at 
work in French society.”— Saturday Review. 

“ It is something to learn the cost of human suffering, at which the 
so-called triumphs of policy have been achieved. It will, it is to be 
feared, be long before the appetite for military glory, which our 
neighbours possess in so high a degree, will be either satisfied or 
diminished; but it is of the greatest importance, that writers of a high 
class should deal honestly and fearlessly with historical facts, and 
not be afraid to point out the enormous amount of human suffering 
wantonly inflicted upon a great people by the caprices and passions 
of its rulers.”— lb. 

11 A military empire may be set up elsewhere, as in France, by the 
juggle of universal suffrage and a new constitution with appropriate 
machinery devised.”— lb. 

“ The Americans acquiesce with the submissiveness of Frenchmen in 
the reign of arbitrary force.”— lb. 

“ A dictatorship, without any real control, concentrating all the 
forces of the nation, has given, and is still giving, to one man in 
France the faculty of reassuring or troubling the mutual relations of 
peoples. If this man be well-inspired, he can do great things; if 
he be ill-counselled, he can cause immense disasters. Public opinion 
can effect nothing with him; no one can speak without his good pleasure. 
He imposes his own deputies, under the pretence of designating them 
as his choice; he establishes or suppresses journals; and, to turn 
aside criticism from his acts in the interior, he excites attention to 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


63 


foreign affairs. Can this situation last ? No one in France thinks 
so, not even the Chief of the State himself. Obliged to agitate outside 
his frontiers and banish liberty, in order to keep peace within, he 
perceives reacting upon France and upon himself the progress of the 
human mind, which he cannot for any length of time suppress. 
Borne to the summit by a revolutionary wave, by a coup d'etat, he 
understands, that he may be swept away, with all that is his, in a 
popular whirlwind. One single defeat , and he is lost; one single 
triumphant barricade, and he falls; his life even belongs to the first 
conspirator who will sacrifice his own. To live thus is not to live; to 
govern thus is not to govern; an authority thus situated cannot be 
established. The Dictator, to preserve himself, is constrained to have 
recourse to a policy as false abroad as it is at home. He establishes 
the principle of non-intervention, and he intervenes at Home, in 
China, in Syria, in Mexico, in Greece, in the United States of 
America. He pretends to continue the work of the Devolution, and 
he makes nobles; he stifles thought, and would maintain an authority 
more absolute than that of Louis the Fourteenth.”— London Liberal 
Taper. 

It is difficult to conceive, and impossible to exaggerate, the 
amount of indignation and disgust, which the perusal af the sub¬ 
joined extract from the Second of December’s last oration, must have 
excited throughout France in every honest and upright mind:— 

“Tell your fellow citizens that I shall be always ready to adopt 
anything in the interests of the majority, but that, if they have at 
heart to facilitate the work that has been commenced, to avoid 
conflicts which only lead to disaster, to strengthen the Constitution 
—which is their ivork ,—they must send to the new Chamber men who, 
like you, accept without reserve the present system , who prefer serious 
deliberations to sterile discussions ; men who , animated by the spirit of 
the age and by a true patriotism , will, by their independent spirit , 
enlighten the path of the Government, and who will never hesitate 
to place above party interest the stability of the State, and the 
greatness of the country.” 

There is not one man of “independent spirit” in any district, by 
whom that system, which is not the “work” of France, but “his 
own work,” carried through by dint of force and fraud, is not 
abjured and abhorred. Bonapartist rule is utterly at variance with 
“ the spirit of the age.” Why should duped and degraded millions 


64 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ accept the present system without reserve ”? What right has an 
adventurer to expect acquiescence in his own usurpations, who for 
years was plotting the subversion of every preceding government, 
whether monarchical or democratic ? Why should Legitimists, 
Orleanists, and Bepublicans, not he training their eagles, preparing 
their armaments, and penning their proclamations ? 

The very hand, which traced this exhortation to “ acceptance 
without reserve ” of his own blood-bought tyranny, signed, a few 
years before, a decree declaring that the Orleans dynasty (then 
securely established as the throne) had ceased to reign; that the 
Chambers were dissolved, and nominating provisional administrators, 
without any authorisation from the parties concerned. 

It is morally impossible, that the victims of his perjury should 
ever be the votaries of his power. Cromwell was one of the greatest 
rulers, whom any age or nation ever saw, and did not possess one 
spark of that selfishness and cruelty, which have characterized both 
the Bonapartes. “While Napoleon bore to other nations Trench 
tyranny and indifference, Cromwell would have given them religious 
liberty and the Gospel” (Merle d'Auligne, p. 252). “Cromwell did 
not launch his destroying legions into Spain, and Bussia, and even 
into Egypt; he thought it the highest excellence to live in Christ” 
(p. 235). “He showed a more exalted intelligence than Napoleon 
Bonaparte, who never ceased from battles, and who made them 
rather the end than the means” (p. 264). “ He refused the regal 

dignity, when repeatedly pressed upon him by many enlightened 
friends of order and freedom” (p. 264). “He gave the country a 
constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been 
known in the world. For himself he demanded indeed the first 
place in the commonwealth, but with powers scarcely so great as 
those of a Dutch stadtholder or an American president ... he did 
not require, that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his 
family” ( Macaulay ). And yet notwithstanding the many benefits 
derived from his rule, “the strict Bepublicans were discontented, 
and often told him to his face, that his government was illegitimate, 
and that they and their friends had not been lavish of their blood 
for the purpose of enthroning anew the power of one man ” 

(Merle d'Aubigne , p. 253); and the Boyalists were unremitting and 
unscrupulous in their designs and devices for the restoration of the 
exiled dynasty. Why then should the too successful conspirator 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO ’WORSHIP THE B ON AT ARTE S ? 


65 


against a constitution, of which he was the sworn and trusted 
defender, expect, that so heinous an infringement of the eternal laws 
of morality and justice should be forgotten or forgiven ? 

Between the intellect and integrity of France, and the vice and 
vulgarity of the Decemberists, there is a great gulf fixed.* The 
crimes of the latter are too flagrant and too flagitious to be condoned. 
Their motive for crying “ Vive VJSmpereur ” is the same which of old 
prompted the worshipful fraternity of silversmiths to exclaim, 
“ Great is Diana of the Ephesians !” “ The craft by which we have 

our wealth is in danger to be set at nought, inasmuch that the 
Saviour of society who had brought no small gain unto us may be 
despised, and his magnificence destroyed (whom all the monarchs 
and statesmen of Europe worship), if an audacious press be permitted 
to persuade and turn away much people.” To the authors and 
abettors of the coup d'etat, their adherence was a matter of calculation 
and convenience. To an unsuccessful speculator, “ qui zonam per - 
didit ,” or to a discarded and discontented political adventurer, who 
had no hope of rising under any other government or dynasty, 
it was a yo^-send (we should perhaps rather say a devil-send) to fall 
in with a designing and desperate leader, eager to place himself at 
the head of as many “workmen of like occupation” as he could 
collect and depend upon. All his prefects, generals, judges, officers, 
and policemen are bound to him by the tie of self-interest, and by 
that alone. They were, “for filthy lucre’s sake,” willing to follow 
him to any heights of audacity, down to any depths of atrocity— 

M .—AVir clenken nicht nach; das ist dcine Sache, 

Du bist der General, und Kommandirst, 

AVir folgen dir, und wenn’s zur Hblle ginge. 

D. —AVir sind Soldaten der Fortuna; wer 
Das meiste bietet, hat uns. 

M. Ja, so ist’s. 

* * * * * 

B. —Jetzt sollt* ihr ebrlicbe Soldaten bleiben. 

***** 

D.—Das sind ivir gcrne. 

B .—Und Fortune machen. 

M .— Das ist noch lesser. — Schiller. 


* It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that the revival of flee and brilliant 
thought in France is almost as necessary and as desirable for England, as it is for 
France itself .—Saturday Review. 


E 





66 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Their loyalty, however, depends entirely upon his luck. No 
attempt to bribe or bully them would succeed so long as “for¬ 
tune’s favour fills the swelling sails;” but in the day of adversity 
the change would be entire and immediate. 

D. —Der Fiirst zablt besscr. 

M. —Ja, der iat splendid. 

***** 

B. —Mit dem ist’s aus. Sein Gliickstern ist gefallen. 

M .—Ist das gewiss ? 

B. — Ich sag’s eucli. 

JD. —1st ’b yorbey mit seinen gliick ? 

B. —Yorbey auf immerdar. Er ist so arm wie wir. 

M .—So arm wie wir ? 

JD. —Ja, Macdonald, da muss man ihn verlassen ! —Schillee. 


I.— Finance. 

It is difficult to determine which of the Bonapartes has been 
most lavish and unscrupulous in the disbursement of the publio 
money. No horse-leeches were ever so grasping and so greedy. The 
arrival of the first N apoleon in any country was the signal for rapine 
and murder. “Le systeme qui rendait moins lourd pour la France 
le fardeau de la guerre, le rendait, en revanche, plus accablant porn* 
les nations etrangeres. Des soldats sont de mauvais percepteurs cles 
contributions; lorsqu’une armee a pour systeme de vivre de requisi¬ 
tions, il arrive toujours qu’une bonne partie des approvisionnemens 
requis sont gaspilles ou perdus .... Napoleon, qui procurait a la 
France ces depouilles opimes des nations vaincues voulut que chacun 
sut bien qu’elles etaient les fruits de son industrie de conquerant. 
En consequence il se les fit abandonner sous la denomination de 
domaine extraordinaire de la Couronne, en specifiant qyHil en serait 
le souverain dispensateur .” ( Molinari .) I have not met anywhere 
with ample or trustworthy details as to financial operations during 
the reign of Napoleon II. “ Nam JBibulo fieri Consule nil memini.^ 
As soon, however, as the Man of December, by trampling law and 
justice under his feet, had usurped the imperial authority, he virtu¬ 
ally said to France (like Benhadad)* “ Thy silver and thy gold are 



OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONArARTES ? 


67 


mine.” And helpless, humiliated France was obliged to reply, “My 
lord, 0 king, according to thy saying, I am thine, and all that I 
have.” Ilis pretending to furnish an annual budget of his receipts 
and outlays is a mere mockery and delusion. He is like a steward 
of whom I read somewhere, at the bottom of whose accounts, when 
they came to be audited, one of the largest items was so many thou¬ 
sand pounds for “ Sundries,” which he never condescended to clear 
up or to explain. The nominal abandonment of the right to levy 
extraordinary sums by decree was only intended to impose upon the 
public credulity. 

‘ ‘ The Emperor has not been in the habit of confining himself within 
the limits of expenditure authorized by the legislative body. The 
budget, as voted, was merely a basis or foundation on which was 
erected, during the course of the year, a series of extraordinary or 
supplementary credits. When the money provided for any par¬ 
ticular service was exhausted, the Emperor, by his simple decree, 
opened a credit for the minister of that department. Since the 
ACCESSION OF THE EMPEROR THE AVERAGE AMOUNT OF THESE EXTRA¬ 
ORDINARY CREDITS EXCEEDED £10,000,000 A YEAR. In OTHER WORDS, 
TnE EXPENDITURE ACTUALLY INCURRED EXCEEDED THE MONEY VOTED 

by that enormous sum.” —Saturday Review . 

“M. Fould assures the Emperor, that the ‘ abandonment of the 
prerogative of credits by decree has not deprived the Government of 
independent means of action, or in any way prejudiced the progress 
of public affairs.’ The assurance was quite unnecessary. M. Fould 
might have made himself easy on that score. No one supposed for 
a moment, that the Emperor had really abandoned the power of controlling 
affairs — lb. 

“ The suppression of extraordinary and supplementary credits, and 
the substitution of transfers from the Budget of one Minister to that 
of another, cannot suppress the causes which compelled a recurrence to 
these credits, and as long as these causes subsist, we must expect to have the 
results, under whatever forms or under whatever name they appear .”— lb. 

The discreditable and desperate juggle of converting the Four- 
and-a-Half per Cents., has procured a temporary and illusory advan¬ 
tage, at the expense of sacrificing a future and permanent gain. 

“ In return for an immediate gain, the State has parted with the right 
of reducing the interest by payment at par, and it is possible, that the 


68 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONATARTES ? 


marketable value of tlie ordinary stock may have been incidentally 
increased. The French have by no means attained a regular equi¬ 
librium of receipt and expenditure, and it is scarcely possible that 
the charges of the Mexican expedition can be met without additional 
derangement. ”— Times. 

“The total of the deficiencies up to the present time amounts to 
848,000,000f., for the deficiency of 1861, amounting to 180,000,000f. 
more, is balanced by the operation of converting the Four-and-a- 
Half per Cents., which cannot , however , J oe repeated. It is certainly 
not very satisfactory to find that, after we have strained our mental 
vision so far as to reach the end of 1864, all we obtain by the process is 
the sight of a deficit of l7,000,000f., dependent on the continuance of 
peace and prosperity, for not exceeding that considerable sum.”— lb. 

“Still it is important to bear in mind, that the reduction of the 
floating debt has been effected entirely by drawing on the resources of the 
future , and affords no indication whatever of an approximation 
between revenue and expenditure.”— Saturday Review. 

“ Such a Government has discounted at a ruinous rate its claims on 
the confidence which it solicits. It has proclaimed its own embarrass¬ 
ments, attempting to debase the currency by stealth, and has been 
detected in so doing.”— Times. 

“The exceptionable resources, which have been available for once 
will not come to the aid of M. Fould or his successor in future years, 
and the problem of establishing a permanent equilibrium in the 
budgets of the Emperor is almost as far from being solved as it was 
whenM. Fould assumed the direction of financial affairs.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“In fact, it is a mere collection of figures, as unreal throughout, 
as the fictitious items relating to the Sinking Fund are candidly 
admitted to be. At some time, and in some shape, retribution must 
be exacted for the practice of steadily exceeding by many millions 
the national income. The value of the contrivance of separating the 
ordinary and extraordinary outlay is nevertheless immense, as a 
means of throwing a decent veil over the extravagance of the 
Government. ”— lb. 

“The Budget of 1862 was introduced with a nominal surplus, 
though the extraordinary part of the expenses was covered mainly by 
resources in the nature of capital, which, however, did not take the 
dreaded shape of a formal loan. But before the legislative year had 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? GO 

closed, it was found necessary to apply to the Legislature for its 
sanction to an additional expenditure of not less than £8,000,000. 
This was granted as of course, and M. Fould comes forward at the 
close of the year to say, that a further sum of nearly £1,500,000 
lias been actually spent, under circumstances which demand the 
approval of the national representatives. An unforeseen expenditure 
of between nine and ten millions sterling, as the fruit of the first 
year of a great financial reform, would make most ministers a little 
uneasy; but M. Fould is perfectly happy in the consciousness that, 
if his new regime has not led to much economy, it has been perfectly 
successful in regularizing the normal course of Imperial extrava¬ 
gance. France pays for the glory and munificence of its chief as 
handsomely as it did before M. Fould appeared upon the stage. 
Taxation has increased instead of diminishing.” — Saturday Review. 

“ Perhaps it is not quite just to deny to M. Fould’s efforts the credit 
of some practical improvement. In the year which preceded M. 
Fould’s accession to office, the Emperor had decreed himself permis¬ 
sion to exceed his income by more than ten millions sterling. This 
year, the excess is only nine millions and a half, all of which has 
been or will be sanctioned by a Parliamentary vote. The half million 
of saving ought to be put to the credit of the Minister; and at this 
rate, a gradual reform, if it continues, will introduce the promised 
‘normal period’ somewhere about 1880.” — lb. 

1 £ Notwithstanding the great circulation of money in Paris, the small 
traders are not prosperous. The number of failures among that 
class has considerably increased. The applications from small mer¬ 
chants to the registrar of the Tribunal of Commerce to be declared 
in a state of bankrupty have become so numerous, that the judges of 
that court are trying to limit them .”—Liberal Raver. 

“The return of the Bank of France this month, just published, 
is eminently unfavourable. The cash on hand has diminished 
£1,920,000, and the Government balances £1,540,000. The bills 
discounted have increased £3,760,000, to a certain extent from the 
same causes which have been at work in London. The note circula¬ 
tion, and the advances on current accounts, have also increased. 
Should this unfavourable state of the Bank of France account 
continue, purchases of bullion on a large scale will inevitably follow, 
and then will come the turn of the Exchanges, which at present we 
have so much to fear .”—l imes. 


70 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


In financial matters tlie children of despotism and duplicity are, 
or at least appear to be for a season, wiser than the children of liberty 
and light; but their triumph is temporary and evanescent, their 
tricks and treacheries cease to answer the purpose, and honesty is 
found to be, after all, the best policy in the long run. Meanwhile, 
the mercantile world, or rather the community at large, are often 
embarrassed and entangled by these tortuous fluctuations, and the 
trade and transactions of neighbouring countries impeded and inter¬ 
fered with in a most preposterous and prejudicial manner. 

“It may be possible, by circulating false statements of fact on official 
authority , as the First Napoleon did through the 1 MoniteurJ to gain 
time for some movement or measure which it is intended to mask. 
Even this trick may be played too often, and the present advantage 
may be purchased too dearly by the loss of credit for the future.”-— 
Times. 

“ Until the drain of gold is checked in France, and a reduction of 
discount takes place at Paris as a consequence, there can be no very 
decided or prolonged return of ease on our side.”— Liberal Taper. 

“The Credits Mobiliers of France and Spain have been ordered to 
rise. The Paris press comments very freely on the proceeding, but 
still the shares rise in obedience to the impulse given them. It appears 
that each company holds the securities of the other, so that, by 
purchases or sales in combination, they can send the ball up or 
down pretty much as they please. The shares of the French Credit 
Mobilier were quoted a month ago at 850 francs each, and they now 
stand at 1,187 francs—a rise of 337 francs , or 40 per cent, in a month.” 
—Saturday Review. 

“It is strange how little is required to produce a serious effect on 
the Paris Bourse. It opens firm and with abundance of buyers, and 
suddenly, without apparent, or at least without any sufficient cause, 
down it drops 1 per cent., and finally closes so without a single 
rally.”— Liberal Taper. 

“ The prospects of the money market do not improve, and it appears 
very doubtful whether the recent advance in the rate will suffice to 
check the drain of gold. It is understood that the Bank of France, 
since the issue of the last return ten days ago, has lost upwards of 
£700,000 more of its bullion, and as its reserve is less than a fourth 
of its obligations to the public, means must be taken one way or 
other to relieve the Bank from the pressure upon it. The Bank of 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE3 ? 


71 


France lias shown great tardiness in adopting legitimate measures 
for its own ease, and there is no doubt that it is again pursuing an 
irregular and anomalous procedure for obtaining supplies of gold 
from England—a course of action which has more than once dis¬ 
turbed our money market. There is much speculation in Paris as 
to where all the money taken from the Bank goes, it being well 
known that it is not required for the operations of trade. The 
general conclusion come to is that the greater portion of it has gone 
to Mexico .”—Liberal Paper. 

“The efforts of M. Fould to restore something like equilibrium, 
regularity, economy, and fair dealing, into the confused and clumsy 
chaos of imperial finance, appear to have been attended with very 
questionable success.”— lb. 

“M. Fould is said to be in despair about the French finances, all 
the other ministers being averse to any reduction in their particular 
departments. From a decree in the Moniteur of yesterday it would 
at first sight appear that his imperial master had come to his aid, 
but a second glance shows that the ordinance only prohibits, without 
the sanction of the Minister of Finance, augmentation in the charges 
of the budget, while M. Fould demands great reductions.”— lb. 

“It must be peculiarly unsatisfactory to M. Fould, in the first 
experimental year of his labours for the restoration of the balance of 
French finance, to find that he has been working in great measure 
to purchase the prospective and doubtful glory of the Mexican war. 
He must feel uneasy indeed for the balancing of the revenue, for his 
surplus, for his promises that taxation shall not be augmented.”— lb. 

“M. Fould considers the revenue and expenditure, the probabili¬ 
ties of a balance or a deficit in the years 1862, 1863, and 1864, but 
in no one instance does he inform us what is the total amount of 
revenue or expenditure. The matter is further confused by the 
practice of forming two budgets—one ordinary and the other extra¬ 
ordinary.”— lb. 

The blight of despotism, caprice, extravagance, and waywardness, 
has exercised a fearful influence in destroying the prosperity, as 
well as demoralizing the principles, of the mute and manacled 
French people. 

“ It was generally known that the cash in the Bank of France had 
diminished during the last month, but it was not believed that the 


72 OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 

position was so unfavourable as it appears in tlie monthly account 
published in the Moniteur on Thursday last. The cash has dimi¬ 
nished since the publication of the preceding- account by 52,000,000 
francs, and the bank notes in circulation have increased by 
44,000,000 francs. The fact of the cash in hand being reduced 
to 268,000,000 francs, while the bank notes in circulation exceed 
829,000,000 francs, is regarded by the public as not without danger. 
Persons who profess to be well informed as to what is passing 
within the Bank assert, moreover, that some million francs of gold 
have been withdrawn since the monthly account was published by 
the Governor. Everybody asks where the gold thus withdrawn is 
going to.”— Times. 

11 The monthly account published on Friday last by the Governor 
of the Bank of France demonstrates that commercial affairs are 
becoming more languid. The commercial bills discounted have 
decreased within the month by 43,000,000 francs, and the cash in 
hand by 13,500,000 francs.”— lb. 

“ The monthly return of the Bank of France, published yesterday, 
shows some very extensive changes, all of an unfavourable character. 
The bullion exhibits a falling off to the extent of £2,040,000, re¬ 
ducing the amount held at the head office and branches to less than 
eleven millions sterling. On the other hand, the discount operations 
of the establishment show the large increase of £3,360,000, while 
the advances on stocks exhibit an augmentation of £826,666. The 
Treasury balance has been reduced £536,000, and the circulation 
has been extended £1,752,000. These alterations have been viewed 

with some anxiety on the Bourse and on the London Exchange.”_ 

Liberal Paper. 

“If we are to judge from the increase in the number of bank¬ 
ruptcies officially declared, French commerce is in a very sickly 
condition. The official returns state that the number of bankrupt¬ 
cies in Paris between the 30th of June, 1860, and the 30th of June 
1861, amounted to 1,296, and from the 30th of June, 1861, to the 
30th of June, 1862, to 1,730, being an increase of 434 in twelve 
months. ”— Times. 

The following statement appeared in a respectable London paper 
a few months ago:— 

“The depression of commerce in Paris is becoming exceedingly 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


H o 


t a 


great. The last return of the Bank of France shows a decline of 
nearly three millions sterling in the amount of hills discounted, 
compared with the ^preceding month, which testifies to a fearful 
falling off in the business, and consequently in the profits, of 
traders, and in the employment of workmen. In every part of the 
town the number of shops closed is unusually great, and it is 
increasing every week. The official lists of bankrupts are, too, 
much larger than usual, in short, the situation is deplorable; some 
persons say it is almost as bad as in 1848.”— Press. 

“ He is poor, and, in our day, war cannot be made without much 
money. He has overspent himself; his people are poor from ex¬ 
hausted resources, a bad harvest, and a crippled trade. They have 
found out, too, that the Empire costs a great deal of money, and they 
are not in particular good humour at the discovery.”— lb., 1862. 

M. Casimir Perier lately favoured the world with a very important 
and instructive comparison between the Imperial expenditure, that 
of Britain, and that of Prance under the monarchy of July. Lucid 
and admirable as that document is, I can only find room for a very 
short but significant extract under each head:— 

“Prom 1843 to 1862 England, with her expedition to the Crimea, 
two campaigns in China, and the Indian war, borrowed, under 
divers forms, but a little over one milliard, and made successive 
reductions in her debt amounting to more than 600 millions. 
During the same thirteen years the French funded debt was 
increased by from 244,000,000 to 380,000,000, and the amount of 
active Kentes is near 330,000,000, instead of 176,000,000. Under 
this head alone more than 150,000,000 of annual Rente have been added 
to the public charges. This is more than the extraordinary budget of 
1863, and it is five times the proposed tax upon salt. 

“These figures, which nobody will dispute, which nobody can 
dispute, are more eloquent than any comments. I could add 
nothing to this speaking homage in favour of the financial adminis¬ 
tration of free governments. 

“The Civil List of 1860 is 25,000,000 francs; that of 1847, 
12,000,000 francs. For princes and princesses in 1863, 1,500,000 
francs , against 1,300,000 francs in 1847; and for the Chambers, 
Council of State, Cour des Comptes, Ministers, and the central 
administration of Ministerial Departments, Privy Council, and 


74 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Ministers without Portfolio, tlie total for 1863 is 58,532,156 francs, 
against 31,529,606 francs in 1847 —showing a difference of 27,003,550 
francs in favour of 1847.” 

“Prom 1852 to 1861, without a single exception, the regulation 
of the budget exhibited a considerable excess of real over presumed 
expenditure.” 

( ‘ Who can say after casting a glance at the extraordinary credits 
of late years, what may be in 1863 the definitive settlement of this 
budget?” 

Is it not very provoking, as well as painful, to reflect how justly 
it may be said to the French bees, “non vobis mellificatis,” but for 
the hornets, wasps, and drones of the genus Bonaparte? On 
opening just now Molinari’s volume, I find a “ requisitoire, qui 
ordonnait notamment, que Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, ne a 
Paris, demeurant a Londres, cheveux et sourcils chatain blond, front 
ordinaire, yeux gris, nez fort, bouche moyenne, menton rond, visage 
ovale, serait pris au corps, et conduit dans la maison d’arret”—a 
just penalty for an unprovoked and unprincipled invasion. And yet 
this very culprit, with his cohort of relatives, hangers-on, and 
accomplices, is now lording it over the destinies, and trampling upon 
the rights, of great and glorious France! “Lord, how long shall 
the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? how long shall 
they utter and speak hard things, and all the workers of iniquity 
boast themselves ? They break in pieces thy people, 0 Lord, and 
afflict thine heritage.” When shall France, by a prolonged 
endurance of the most galling and grinding despotism, have 
expiated the heinous crime of having immolated on the scaffold the 
best-intentioned and most benevolent of her kings, whom she had 
not long before, under the impulse of grateful enthusiasm, pro¬ 
claimed to be the father of his country? and who, had he been 
spared instead of sacrificed, would have invited the co-operation of 
her wisest and worthiest statesmen, under whose auspices a free and 
well-ordered constitution would have prevented countless crimes, 
averted intolerable miseries, and ensured a golden era of prosperity 
and peace! 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONARARTES ? 


7o 


11 .—Degraded and Prostrate Condition of the Press. 

We liave the authority of the Man of December himself for 
asserting, that the first Napoleon intended to withhold from his 
successors that arrogant and arbitrary control over the press, which 
he himself unblushingly and unrelentingly exercised. The nephew, 
however, has been “his parallel” in this path of despotic rigour 
and repression, and we may consider, under distinct heads, the 
manner in which this debasing influence has been contrived and 
carried out. 

1. The Man of December himself, and the press of France, cherish 
mutually towards each other precisely similar sentiments of dread 
and detestation. The maxim which he has laid down for its guidance 
seems to be, “Never venture to tell any truth at variance with my 
interests and wishes, and never hesitate to publish any lie, by which 
my views can be promoted. No paper must ever be circulated, in 
which I do not ‘hear something much to my advantage.’ ” The 
stern and steady precautions, which he feels compelled to adopt, 
in order to prevent the spreading of the infection, demonstrate his 
belief that the fever of disaffection is not only widely spread but 
perilously contagious. 

2. Principles (rather stringent) and practice (rather sharp) of 
Persigny and Billault, the two chief official garotters. 

“In the Emperor’s mind, the cherished idea of a French press is 
a state of things in which the most brilliant writers of all parties 
shall vie with each other to clothe Napoleonic ideas in sparkling 
language, for the benefit of a circle of subscribers not less numerous 
than before. His object is not to kill French journalism, but to 
domesticate it; and therefore he goes gently to work. It must be 
broken in gradually to abstain from all topics or lines of thought 
uncongenial to the Imperial policy .”—Saturday Review. 

“ There is a certain sort of political metaphysics, to which the 
official writers of Imperial France are much addicted. It consists in 
the arbitrary union of certain abstract terms, and their equally 
arbitrary application to existing things. This kind of logic has this 


7 G 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


merit,—that it can prove one thing just as well as another; and 
that, having proved it, it can, if necessary, disprove it with equal 
facility. By means of a dexterous application of this modern science 
of rigmarole, M. de Lagueronniere has established to his own satis¬ 
faction, that a number of things are impossible which seem to an 
ordinary apprehension quite possible, and that a number of things 
are necessary, which seem to an ordinary apprehension by no means 
requisite .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ France must be amused and occupied with schemes of aggran¬ 
disement and glory, or her eye will be turned inwards on the 
extinction of the liberties of person and of the press, on the frightful 
extravagance of the Imperial rule, and the alarming embarrassments 
of her finance, and the dynasty of the Bonapartes falls into imminent 
peril of being swept away.”— Press. 

11 The Imperial policy may be openly discussed indeed, and a cer¬ 
tain latitude of opinion is permitted with regard to it. It may be 
admired and applauded, for example ; may be legitimately made the 
object of inflated panegyric. But that it should in any shape or 
form be censured, either at home or abroad, cannot for a moment be 
tolerated .”—Daily News. 

“ If persistent hostility to the press be the best qualification of a 
good minister, or the test of fidelity to the sovereign he serves, then 
is M. Persigny the greatest France lias produced since the time of 
Biehelieu. Biclielieu valued supreme authority, because it enabled 
him to carry out three great objects—the destruction of the political 
power of the Protestants in France, lowering the pride of the nobles, 
and humbling the house of Austria. To judge by his acts, M. Per¬ 
signy thinks that it is worthy the ambition of a minister, who knows 
his duty, to trample out the last spark of vitality left in the press by 
his predecessors, MM. Lagueronniere and Billault.”— Times. 

“ M. de Persigny is too coarse and blunt a tool for work so fine. 
He is a statesman of General Butler’s school. Spur and curb, and 
plenty of both, are his only idea of riding. A wayward fate has 
lifted him out of the mire, to seat him on horseback; and he is 
speeding rapidly to the goal, which the proverb promises to the 
subjects of such an unmerited elevation. He looks upon himself 
chiefly as a machine for annihilating newspapers, and measures his 
own efficiency by the number he has suppressed.”— Saturday Review. 
“The expression of forbidden opinions in unobjectionable lan- 


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77 


g'liage has become an art of itself under the Second Empire; and it 
has been practised with an exquisite subtlety and adroitness. But 
the contest between helpless cleverness and thick-witted power is too 
unequal to last. The Minister of the Interior will run the journalists 
to earth in the end. His aim is to convert the whole existing news¬ 
paper press into docile organs of the Imperial mind; and no inge¬ 
nuity upon the part of the victims will be able ultimately to avert its 
accomplishment.”— Saturday Review. 

“The Opinion Rationale has just got an avertissement from the 
Minister of the Interior for insinuating that the policy of the Govern - 
ment is under ‘ clerical influence ’—thus, adds the minister, ‘ mis¬ 
representing the liberal intentions of the Emperor’s Government.’ ” 

“ Yesterday’s telegraph informs us that another Paris paper, the 
Revue Nationale , has received ‘ a first warning.’ These warnings, 
like those of Admiral Fitzroy, betoken elemental commotion. It 
was only on Monday that the Emperor told us that ‘ everybody sees 
that there is no longer among the masses the uneasiness of former 
times, and their convictions do not change at the least breath that 
seems to agitate the political atmosphere.’ If this is true, how 
comes it that, within a week, three newspapers have received 
warnings, Le Temps and the Revue Nationale for a first time; and 
the Courrier do JDhnanche for a third and last time ? ”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The Courrier de Dimanche may now be suspended, or even sup¬ 
pressed, whenever the minister pleases; for the Decree of 1832 
specifies that—‘A journal may be suspended by a decision of a 
minister, though it may not have been condemned, but only after 
two warnings, and for a period not exceeding two months ; and a 
journal may be suppressed either after a judicial or administrative 
suspension, as a measure of public security, by a special decree of 
the President of the Kepublic.’ ” 

“ The Minister of the Interior is carrying on the campaign 
vigorously against the press. A monthly periodical, the Revue 
Nationale , has just received a warning, which the Prefect of Police is 
ordered to see properly carried out. No specific charge against the 
Revue Nationale is mentioned ; it is merely alleged that ‘ the writer 
of the article ( Chronique Politique) tries to trouble public tranquillity 
and to throw discredit on the Government.’ M. Lagueronniere’s 
paper, La France , affects to regret this persistent persecution and 
expresses sympathy for the victims. As M. Lagueronniere, w r hile 


78 


OUGHT FEANCE TO "WOE SHIP THE BOHAPAETES ? 


Director of the Press, was himself noted for his implacable severity, 
it is probable the only regret he feels is, that it is no longer 
by his own hand that the scourge is wielded. I quoted the other 
day a statement from the minister’s report on the ‘ situation of the 
empire,’—that, on condition of respecting the dynasty and the Con¬ 
stitution, the press was perfectly free to discuss all political topics. 
This, I presume, is the ride, and avertissements the exceptions which 
are meant to confirm it. The exceptions are, unfortunately, becom¬ 
ing so frequent, that they are likely soon to supersede the rule alto¬ 
gether. ’ ’— Times. 

“The Moniteur contains the following:—‘Whereas the journal 
Le Temps of this day’s date (14th) contains in the third, fourth, and 
fifth columns of the first page, an article signed ‘ E. Schoerer, ’ com¬ 
mencing with these words, ‘ The Emperor on opening the Session,’ 
and ending with these, ‘of which we may hope for the result;’ 
whereas this article, by misrepresenting the sense of the Emperor’s 
speech, and calumniating the foreign and domestic policy of France, 
attempts to throw discredit on the Government; I order that, in 
virtue of the Organic Decree of 17th February, 1852, on the press, 
Art. 1, a first warning is given to the Temps , in the person of 
M. Nefftzer, the manager, and M. Ed. Schoerer, the signer of the 
article. The Prefect of Police, charged with the general direction of 
the public security, will see to the execution of the present.— 
E. de Pebsigny.’ 

“By general consent the Temps, of all the Paris papers, is pre¬ 
cisely the one that unites talent of a high order with impartiality, 
great moderation, and complete independence. Such qualities are 
rare indeed as the French press is at present constituted; but they 
are qualities which, though rare, seem to be particularly distasteful 
to the ‘ Administration.’ ”— lb. 

There is as earnest a desire to purchase praise, as to punish 
censure. 

“Mr. Serjeant Glover was the proprietor of the late Morning 
Chronicle , and in that capacity he now claims no less than £14,000 
from MM. Billault and Persigny, for work done and money laid out 
on their behalf. Not only does he allege, that he caused articles to 
be written and inserted in the Morning Chronicle, Morning News, and 
Evening Journal , at the dictation of these two foreigners* but he seeks 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES 


79 


to recover payment for other articles written in English and trans¬ 
lated into Erench for publication in the Moniteur , the Constitutionnel, 
and other French papers. In other words, he undertook not only to 
manufacture English public opinion to order, but to counterfeit 
French public opinion by articles of English workmanship. It is as 
though the fabricators of spurious Bank of England notes had been 
employed by some one in the confidence of the French Government 
to imitate the notes of the Bank of France too. The habit of 
‘ inspiring ’ newspapers seems to have become a passion with these 
statesmen, and they embraced the grand idea of having an organ 
of their own in England. Why they selected, or how they managed 
to hire the Morning Chronicle , does not appear; but the speculation 
did not prove a lucky one.”— Times. 

“ ‘Sir, with reference to the leading article appearing in your 
journal of this date, which proceeds upon assumed facts disclosed by 
an ex parte statement of the plaintiff, we beg to say,— 

‘ ‘ ‘ That his Excellency Count de Persigny never saw the plaintiff or 
ever held any communication or correspondence with him of any kind. 

“ ‘ That the first time the said Count de Persigny became 
acquainted with Mr. Glover was on the occasion of his being served 
with process in this action. 

“ ‘ That M. Billault has by his affidavit made in this action denied 
in the most distinct and emphatic manner all the allegations made 
by the plaintiff.’ ” 

“The legal document in question, which I have before me, and 
must give in its dry, technical form, is a demand addressed by 
M. Sandon for leave to prosecute M. Billault , a member of the Cabinet 
without office. It sets forth the grounds on which the demand is 
based, in a memorial forming part of it, and presented to the Senate. 
Here it is :— 

“ ‘ Messieurs les Senateurs,—After being arrested fourteen times 
in the space of two years; first, in pursuance of the orders of 
M. Billault, Minister of the Interior, judging in his own cause; 
then, in compliance with his desire when he was a member of the 
Cabinet without office—after seeing, fifteen months ago, twenty- 
seven gendarmes invading my house, at five o’clock in the morning, 
for the purpose of arresting me and hurrying me off to Paris, in 
virtue of a telegraphic despatch sent to the Prefect—after seeing the 
department I live in struck with amazement and my own family 


80 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


struck with, terror—after seeing my mother, an aged woman, startled 
from her bed and fainting in the arms of the gendarmes—after seeing 
her suffering, in consequence of her alarm, from a paralysis of the 
leg and arm, moreover, from a constant palpitation of the heart of a 
dangerous character, combined with a most painful difficulty of 
utterance—after being, on the 6th of April last, thrown into a dungeon 
and confined as a madman for eleven clays—after being twice incar¬ 
cerated at Mazas, the first time for two-and-twenty clays, the second 
time for sixty-four days, and then discharged out of custody on the 
19th of August, 1861, proceedings against me having been stayed 
for want of any evidence whatever;—finally, after being arrested, on 
the 12th of June (though, on a written invitation of M. Billault, 
transmitted to me through the Sub-Prefect of Aubusson, I had 
meanwhile gone to Paris, where M. Billault himself had, in his own 
study, Hue St. Arnaud, given me the strongest personal assurances 
that I should not be again molested), simply because I declined to 
follow his advice—after undergoing cruel sufferings, and being 
violently menaced in case I should dare so much as to complain, I 
began to think that the physician they called in to ascertain my 
mental condition, and to specify the particular nature of my madness , 
was probably in the right when he said to me, ‘ In my opinion, } r ou 
are completely mad, and your madness consists in believing that, 
under the present Government, any man would be permitted to make 
good his grievances against a minister.’ I cannot go to Paris. My 
family would not allow me to take so rash a step. I am not myself 
bold enough to attempt it. I fear neither exile nor poverty ; but I 
do fear the cells of Mazas, and the cells of Bicetre inspire me with a 
feeling of horror. I should not like, of course, to die a madman, and 
I have little doubt that this would after a while be my fate, were I 
confined in Bicetre, or even in Mazas.’ 

“ These are M. Sandon’s grievances, as unfolded by himself. So 
strange are the facts alleged that they are hardly credible. At any 
rate, the case is one deserving of careful examination. I am told 
that the legal adviser of M. Sandon is M. H. Duboy, a distinguished 
barrister attached to the ‘ Conseil d’Etat,’ and, moreover, a man 
than whom no one stands higher in the estimation of the Liberal 
party. It remains to be seen whether the whole matter will be duly 
sifted. This entirely depends upon the ‘ Conseil d’Etat,’ the formal 
authorisation of which is requisite for the prosecution of any public 



OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


81 


functionary, according to the provisions of the law of the 22 Trimaire 
an XVIII. It is to be observed that the right both to appoint and 
to dismiss the members of the ‘ Conseil d’Etat’ rests with the 
Emperor—a happy contrivance, the drift of which is to prevent the 
Government agents from being found at fault so long as it is the 
pleasure of the Emperor that they should be held faultless .”—Liberal 
Paper. 


Io n’abborisco il nome ; 

Vorrei vendetta—il punirei; ma come ? 

Io lo so, lo veggo, ancb’io— 

Troppo insulta, e troppo offende— 

Ne ha fede, non intende 
Ne respetto, ne pieta. 

Ma comune e il fato mio. 

Ma ciascun lo soffre, e teme. 

E il soffrir con tante insieme, 

Non mi par cbe sia yilta. 

Metastasio. 

“ The Brussels Independance observes:—‘The Temps was warned 
yesterday. The Revue Rationale , a periodical publication, is so to¬ 
day. The Independance was detained yesterday at the Post-office. In 
view of this painful recurrence of rigour, and above all in the absence 
of precise definitions of the offences which may be committed, the 
non-official press has formed a resolution to abstain henceforth 
from any reflection upon the action of the Government.” 

“Another paper, the Journal de la Cote-d ’ Or , has been visited with 
a warning for an article on Mexican affairs, and for repeating a 
rumour that the Italian Minister in Paris had made a journey to 
Turin. No specific charge is stated; there is only the general alle¬ 
gation that the article contains on the events in Mexico ‘ calumnious 
allegations, having for their object to throw discredit on the Govern¬ 
ment,’ and that the mention of the Italian Minister’s visit to Turin 
was attributed by the writer ‘ to serious diplomatic difficulties.’ ” 

“ Since the press amnesty of last year, the Revue de deux Mondes 
has received one avertissement for an article on the finances, which 
article was confirmed to the letter soon after by M. Fould’s famous 
report to the Emperor; the Presse , one; the Journal des Dcbats, one; 
the Siecle, one ; the Temps , one; the Revue Nationale , one; th vPhare 
de la Loire } one; the Memorial des Deux Sevres , one; the Opinion 

F 


82 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


Rationale, two; the Gironde, two; the Pr ogres de Lyon, two; the 
Opinion du Midi, two ; the Courrier de Dimonche, three; and the 
Journal de la Cote-d' Or, one. Besides these, the Orleanais, the 
Gutenburg, the Jeune France, and the Travail da Matin have been 
suppressed after the requisite number of avertissements or prosecutions. 
The Gazette de France and the JJnion have each had a prosecution, 
followed, of course, by condemnation.”— Times. 

“ I believe that no order has been given to the Paris press to pass 
over in silence an incident which everybody is talking about; but, 
notwithstanding the absence of all prohibition, not a single journal, 
official or independent, has, as I have already said, dared to mention 
it even among its fails divers. Nothing more clearly illustrates the 
utter prostration of the press.”— lb. 

“ No paper in Paris has dared to mention the fact, or even say a 
single word about the police razzia the other day, when the sheets of 
the Duke d’Aumale’s historical work were carried off, though all 
Paris is talking about it.”— lb. 

“On Tuesday last the sale of the pictures of M. Demidoff, the 
husband, I believe, of Princess Mathilde, commenced at the Salle de 
Yente, Pue Drouot. Among these was the Stratonici, a chef d'oeuvre 
of Ingres, and which formerly belonged to the Duchess of Orleans. 
Por this picture there was a warm competition. Among the bidders 
were an agent of the Duke d’Aumale and a chamberlain or an 
orderly officer of the Emperor. After a smart contest the picture 
was adjudged to the Duke d’Aumale’s agent for 94,000f. When the 
name of the purchaser was announced by the auctioneer it, was 
received by those present with repeated clapping of hands and other 
signs of applause. It was, as I have said, on Tuesday, that this 
little incident took place; it was on the following Thursday that the 
publisher and printer received notice that the Duke d’Aumale’s work 
must not appear; and it was on Friday that the whole impression 
was seized.”— Liberal Paper . 

“ General Forey is said to have given strict orders to his officers to 
say nothing in their letters about the state of affairs.”— Lb. 

“ The Chronique de V Ouest has received a second warning from the 
Prefect of the Sarthe, for having ‘ attacked the principle of universal 
suffrage, and grossly insulted the dignity of the Government founded 
on that principle.’ ”— Times. 

“The Minister of the Interior, M. F. de Persigny, has declared, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


83 


under Lis Land and seal, that it 1 excites to Latred and contempt of 
tLe Government.’ And so tLe Courrier Las been warned accord- 
i n gly> and notwitlistanding tliat every allegation in tLe article is 
perfectly true, wLile tLe terms in wLicli it is coucLed are everywLere 
perfectly guarded. But il n’y a que la verite qui pique, and tLe well- 
tempered weapon sinks all tLe deeper by reason of its polish.”— lb. 

11 Hardly a week now passes in Paris without some new blow 
against tLe press. TLe ‘ warning ’ given to tLe Temps Las been fol¬ 
lowed by another given to the Revue Nationale. No specific charge 
is mentioned. It is merely alleged that it ‘ tries to trouble the 
public tranquillity, and to throw discredit on the Government.’ The 
editorial dismay is great. At a meeting of editors and proprietors 
it was proposed to abstain altogether from noticing the internal 
politics of France, as the only course consistent with safety.”— 
Liberal Taper. 

3. All honest and highminded patriots are dishearted and dis¬ 
mayed ; all men of education and genius deprived of their legitimate 
and beneficent influence. 

“France is apathetic about Pome, as about everything. TLe 
patient dog that watches its master to see which way he will throw 
the stone, does not even give a little natural howl when it hears, that 
it has already spent six millions sterling in forcing the Mexicans to 
exercise their free choice in setting up a new Government. The 
great majority of educated men in Paris are shocked at the monstrosity 
of the national troojDs being employed to keep the subjects of a 
foreign Prince in a state of eternal stagnation; but they can only 
express their resentment in a very mild form. Shrinking from the 
chill and uncongenial atmosphere of the Empire, with its gag upon 
the press, its spies in every salon, its dead hand upon the intellect of 
the country, its despotism no longer tempered by epigrams, Madame 
Girardin’s later life became one of reticence as regarded public 
affairs, broken, however, by the fame of her dramatic and literary 
triumphs. ’ ’ — lb . 

“ The newspapers which caused the revolution of 1848 excited the 
just resentment of the more respectable classes; and the peasantry 
who voted for the empire, as well as the army which upholds it, 
despise and dislike liberty in general, and the freedom of the press 
in particular, as the organ of independent thought. The educated 

f 2 


84 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


minority , which is the natural and indispensable guardian of freedom , is 
unpopular and poicerless in France.”—Liberal Paper. 

“At the present moment the questions which most interest France 
and Europe are forbidden ground to all except the slavish advocates 
of Napoleonisin.”— lb. 

“ As for the semi-official press, it lives from hand to mouth—it 
declares its opinions and principles ready cut and dry from head¬ 
quarters—it goes to sleep in the bed of protection, and wakes next 
morning in the arms of free trade ; it is by turns for and against the 
Pope, but it always remains ‘ devoted and independent.’ Such as it 
is, however, I prefer it to the sham opposition press of those ardent 
democrats, who, grasping with one hand the Radical party, and 
clinging to the coat-tails of the Government with the other—whis¬ 
pering into the ear of each by turns, and tying to both. What can 
you talk about, and how can you talk about anything, under the 
constant apprehension that you may have unwittingly incurred 
punishment ? You talk in enigmas , indulge in hints , make use of apo¬ 
logues. You serve up truth to the reader neatly wrapped up in an 
enigma. You don’t say what you mean, and what you don’t say we 
must be able to see as clearly as if you had written it. You are 
always doomed to disguise your real meaning , and you are sufficiently 
candid to suppose that we can take any pleasure in your intellectual 
evolutions on the tight rope. 

“ You have certainty no need of my authorization to demonstrate 
once more, that we do not possess that liberty as in England (of 
which the Emperor has made so fine an eulogium), nor even liberty 
as in Austria, where the law on the press has suppressed warnings 
to journals. However that may be, you announce that your refusal 
of insertion arises from your situation, and not from your intention.” 
— -Montalembert. 

The harsh and haughty measures adopted by the Man of Decem¬ 
ber towards individuals, known or even suspected to be opposed to 
his usurpation (even when they are divested of all power to injure 
him), demonstrate the extent of his terror, as well as of his vindic¬ 
tiveness. 

“La crainte est la passion dominante des tyrans.”— Marmontel. 

“ Some days ago one of the Paris papers mentioned the Count de 
Chambord’s going to London. It was informed that it must not 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


85 


speak of or allude to his name directly or indirectly. Tho prohibition 
has, I hear, been since taken off, and the papers are now at liberty, 
if they think proper, to announce the Count’s return to Frohsdorf.” 

“ A Lady prevented from Lecturing in Paris.— Tho Temps of 
Monday says:—‘We have the good fortune to be able to cite a 
new instance of the precious tutelage in which bureaucracy seeks to 
keep the French mind. Mdlle. Foyer, the young lady who lately 
addressed to us such a remarkable letter, and to whom the Fenais- 
sance would have opened the chairs of all the universities, had 
intended to deliver, at the circle of the learned societies at Malaquais 
Quay, four-or five lectures upon the eighteenth century.” 

“The Imperial Council deliberated; and on January 8th, that 
is, more than two months after her first step in the matter, Mdlle. 
Foyer was informed, that she was not authorized to carry out her 
project. We do not know whether in China her request would have 
had to go through such a labyrinth; but, frankly speaking, we 
think she would have got through it with better success.” 

“The Globe's Paris correspondent says:—In consequence of the 
speech delivered by Yictor Hugo at Brussels, the piece founded upon 
his work, ‘Les Miserables,’ announced for performance in Paris, has 
been suddenly prohibited, and all allusions to it in the pantomimes at 
the close of the year are strictly forbidden, on pain of suppression.” 

“The Paris correspondent of the Daily News says:—‘Now, if 
fair moderate discussion like the above is to be held criminal, how 
idle it is to talk about public opinion in France ? What waste of 
space is it when the English j>apers transfer to their columns from 
Galignani long translations headed ‘ Opinions of the French Press !’ 
How still more absurd is it when the French papers boast, as I see 
many of them do to-day, of the ‘ unanimous ’ approval of the speech 
by the departmental papers, which are even more enslaved than 
those of Paris, and quote complacently fulsome panegyrics, written 
in the offices of the prefects.” 

It is, however, not improbable, that, ere long, this monstrous 
edifice of oppression may collapse and fall into pieces. 

“No wonder that such a system is described as one which ‘rules 
without apprehension over a people of hypocrites, which is flattered 

by the press, and cursed in the inner chambers—which exults in 


86 


OUGHT FEANCE TO WOESHIP THE BONAPAETES? 


the obedience of its subjects, and knows not that those subjects are 
leagued against it in a freemasonry of hatred.’ ”— Liberal Paper. 

“The Orleans Princes especially have presented an admirable 
spectacle of moderation and dignity.”— Saturday Review. 

Had such an article appeared in any French paper, its very truth¬ 
fulness would have ensured condemnation of the rash editor; for 
whatever is an act of justice towards any former dynasty is, by 
implication, construed into a libel upon the present. 

“The empire only rests upon the prevalent conviction, that it 
assures more of material well-being than some of the systems that 
might replace it. The national spirit of Frenchmen is not reduced 
so low that they will submit to the official pillage which is the usual 
accompaniment of centralized despotism (? ?) The safety of the 
Emperor’s dynasty is staked upon the efficiency of his Government; 
and in reducing the Press to its present low estate , lie is parting with 
one of the surest guarantees by which that efficiency can he secured .”— 
Saturday Review. 

“Property has descended, in some districts of France, to a state 
which is positively ludicrous as well as injurious. The house is 
divided from the barn, the orchard from the paddock, the farm 
buildings from the land; and the land is divided till half a dozen 
olive trees—nay, we have even heard of one tree—become the only 
property of a lord of the soil, who may doubtless trace his descent, 
in a continually declining scale, from the seigneur of the commune.” 

From this system, which has the sanction of the Code Napoleon, 
springs the great majority of the ignorant and illiterate masses, who 
are the chief props and partizans of the Decemberist dynasty. 

4. The editors of all publications are almost compelled to abandon 
their occupations, and even scarcely dare to be silent, when: they are 
unwilling to flatter or to praise. 

“I hear that the editors of such journals as have any pretensions 
to independence are so panic struck at these repeated warnings, 
indicating, as they think, a settled determination to crush the press 
completely, that they have resolved to publish no more articles for 
some time on French politics.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The accounts from the cotton districts in France are very 
gloomy. They are not brought to the knowledge of the public as 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


87 


they should be, simply because the newspapers tremble at the thought 
of giving umbrage to the Prefects , sure as they are, that any facts, 
beyond what the authorities may think proper to reveal would draw 
down official anger; and the Minister might even interpret these 
disclosures as holding up the Government to hatred and contempt— 
a crime little short of treason.”— Liberal Paper. 

“Almost all the newspapers are taken up to-day with comments 
upon the Imperial speech. The most courageous make no mention of it 
whatever , or simply give a short analysis of its principal features, for 
in reality there is nothing in it worth writing about, and the con¬ 
stant fall of the Bourse indicates sufficiently the impression produced 
by it. The exaggerated praises of the official press grate upon the 
ear in the midst of the general silence of the public, who cannot 
understand why the Chief of the State should leave unnoticed so 
many interesting questions. Never has M. Paulin Limayrac more 
cynically exhibited the collar of servitude; his praises, which fall 
haphazard, are so many blows to the power which he seeks to 
extol.”— II. 

“They may save themselves now the humiliation, and loss of 
time and temper, which the daily waiting in hopes of a little favour¬ 
able gossip from Paris has so long cast on them. They may, for a 
time at least, cease to feed each other with such dry crumbs of news 
as that the Emperor has gone to Biarritz in a secular, and returned 
in an Ultramontane, state of mind.”— II. 

“The director of the telegraphic agency known as the ‘Con¬ 
tinental ’ has written to the Paris papers to say that he can no 
longer supply them with information, and is obliged to suspend his 
operations in this capital, in consequence of a Ministerial order to 
that effect.”— Ih. 

“ To this, as well as to the fear of holding up the Government to 
hatred and contempt by giving a true account of the condition of the 
working population , is, I think, to be attributed the fact of only 
£10,000 being as yet subscribed to relieve the destitution of more 
than 130,000 human beings.”— lb. 

“ For the decay of morals and intellect which he professes to have 
proved, M. Pelletan finds but one great and predominant cause, 
the absence of political and intellectual freedom. Nothing, he over 
and over again declares, can compensate for the evils which spring 

from the suppression of free thought. No new streets, no improve- 


88 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


ment in police, no civic tranquillity, no imperial splendour, no foreign 
glory, no Mexico, no Cochin China, can make up for this. M. Pelle- 
tan scorns ‘glory’ as he loves freedom, order, and progress.”— 
Liberal Paper. 

“ ‘Liberty,’ says M. Forcade, with much force, ‘is gone. If we 
lose fraternity, what have we left but a dust of atoms, insensible 
and frozen, impenetrable to the free current of sentiments, which 
are the vivifying bonds of society?’ ”— lb. 

“No local newspaper will expose itself to an avertissement or 
suspension by giving publicity to the real state of things, or by 
hinting that any fraction of the French empire could be otherwise 
than flourishing. A writer who would truly describe the sufferings 
of the population, would probably lay himself open to a prosecution 
by the Procureur for circulating news tending, in the words of the 
law, ‘to excite hatred and contempt against the Government.’ ”— lb. 

“ Human nature speaks out with us, and if anything goes wrong 
she is conscious of the power of her voice. In France she has been 
over-disciplined , and has learnt her lesson only too well; for feeling 
may be stifled too much, even to the point of there being nothing 
left to stifle. The drill system has certainly been carried too far in 
France , if such a justice as this excites no disgust. But we hope 
there is still left in her a class large enough and willing to enlighten 
French public opinion on this subject.”— lb. 

5. This daring and domineering policy is upheld by an inhuman 
and intolerable system of espionage and persecution. 

“ The police has its recognized agents, who alone can give evi¬ 
dence in courts of justice. The secret police seconds the official 
police, puts it on the track of conspiracies and conspirators, and 
indicates the means of ascertaining the reality of the plots 
denounced. The official police avails itself of the information thus 
obtained. When it has verified the facts, it gives evidence thereon, 
and states what it has seen and heard. This is the course always 
followed hitherto, and it is an inversion of the functions of the two 
services to produce in court evidence or information intended to remain 
secret. If that practice were allowed to prevail , the accused would be 
judged on anonymous information. It is of no avail for the official 
agent to allege his conviction of the trustworthiness of those under 
him, for what proof can be given of the fact ? The proceedings of 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


89 


French, tribunals are public; but that 'publicity is lost if the witnesses 
are to remain in the background. We should then be returning to the 
secret trials of our old parliaments.”— French Paper. 

u How is it, then, that the police should have left, during two or 
three years, our labouring classes exposed to temptations of which 
it was cognizant, according to its own avowal? Why, in a word, 
not have prosecuted in 1860 three or four persons, instead of arresting 
eighty-three in 1862 ? There is in this evidently something serious, 
and which has made a strong impression on the public conscience. 
We do not wish to discuss here the secret action of the police; we 
do not wish to examine in a moral and political point of view the 
utility of such a weapon; that would lead us too far, and, besides, 
we hardly like treating of those matters. But what we can say, 
what every one admits, is, that instigation ought always to be con¬ 
demned ; that, as was well remarked by counsel for the defence, 
after having silenced the tribune and the press, to preserve the 
masses from dangerous excitement, they ought not to be abandoned 
to a buzzing swarm of instigators. It should not come to pass to¬ 
day, as has been the case in the evil days of our history, that reve¬ 
lations such as those we have just seen should generate among us a 
profound distrust, should change our social relations, and leave us 
perpetually in terror of being one of the eighty-three arrested, even 
when our respect for the law permits us to hope that we should not 
be among the thirty-six condemned. An invisible network, in 
which the most innocent may be caught, as proved by the con¬ 
siderable number of acquittals, by the still more considerable 
number of indictments withdrawn, ought not to be permitted to 
form itself around us and our friends.”— lb. 

“Next to the pain one feels at seeing the most serious affairs of 
the country so imprudently discussed, I do not know a sadder 
spectacle than that of those men accused of plotting, who are now 
on their defence before the Correctional Tribunal, after a preventive 
imprisonment, the duration of which has made such an impression 
on the public. Here we have the most complete ignorance worked 
upon by the most impudent perverseness. This is the whole prose¬ 
cution, which would have no importance but for the enormity of the 
penalty suspended over these weak heads. In point of fact it is not 
a question of a few months’ or a few years’ imprisonment which the 
Court may pronounce upon them, but of the transportation which 


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the Government may inflict upon them the very clay following that 
on which they are condemned. Such is the consummate arrange¬ 
ment of the law of general security.”— French Paper. 

“It is notorious, that both in private causes and in public prose¬ 
cutions, the Courts of the country, which claims to lead European 
civilization, are accessible to the influence of power, if not to that of 
direct corruption.”— Saturday Review. 

“The counsel employed in the defence of the persons whose trial 
for conspiracy was brought to a close on Saturday last, dwelt in 
strong terms and at some length on the part played by the police in 
this affair, and M. Arago, who defended Perrinet, denounced to the 
Court ‘ those shadows you cannot lay hands on—those nocturnal 
workmen—those birds of prey which elude the grasp, but melt away 
before the sacred eye of Justice. You cannot know,’ he said, 

‘ what a frightful punishment it is to see one's self to feel one's self 
dogged night and day by those informers, by these base ivretches who are 
under the necessity of denouncing—of denouncing ever and incessantly — 
not merely to obtain gratuities, but to keep up their ignoble trade. I 
have felt it myself—nothing is more humiliating than not to dare to 
salute your relative in the street, not to dare to shake hands with a 
friend, without fearing to implicate them and to expose them to 
torture of this kind.’ " — Liberal Paper. 

“The counsel for the other prisoner stigmatized in similar terms 
the practice of employing agents provocateurs, moutons, and mouchards." 

6. Even gagged and garotted Prance presumes sometimes to enter 
a faint and feeble protest against such intolerant and intolerable 
oppression. 

“ The liberty of the press may be unlimited without danger. The 
truth only is formidable. Falsehood is utterly powerless. The 
more exaggerated the falsehood, the more ineffectual it is. No 
Government has ever fallen by falsehood. What matter that Babouf 
should celebrate the agrarian law; that the Quotidienne should 
detract from the grandeur of the Bevolution, calumniate its heroes, 
and try to bring back the banished Princes. The Government had 
only to leave it to its declamation. Eight days of declamation and 
of lies use up the pens of pamphleteers and libellers, but much time 
will pass before Governments learn that truth.”— French Paper. 

“The Government persists in prohibiting an individual initiative, 


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91 


all free discussion, all municipal independence. It lavishes avertisse - 
merits on newspapers, even when the principle of Government is not 
attacked, and it constantly exercises over them a clandestine pres¬ 
sure. The dignity of the nation calls for the cessation of this con¬ 
tradiction between words and acts. Either let us cease to be deprived 
of liberty, or let its benefits be no longer vaunted. Let us, at least, 
be spared the humiliation of hearing ourselves described as the only 
people who are unworthy of possessing a benefit which, since our 
great It evolution, we have so often bestowed on others .”—French 
Liberals. 

“ Nothing could be more liberal or more promising than the words 
pronounced by the Emperor in his opening speech to the Senate and 
Legislative Body on the 12th of January last, and nothing less in 
conformity to it than the warning issued by the Administration 
on Saturday, prohibiting the journals, under very severe penalties, 
from making any remarks whatever on the debates in the Legislative 
Chamber, as furnished to them by its worthy President, M. de 
Morny. This contrast between words and acts has been particularly 
marked for the last two years. The liberal decrees of the Sovereign, 
the more liberal circulars of the Minister, which threw all Prance 
into transports of joy, were speedily followed by avertissements more 
numerous, more unjustifiable, and more ruinous than ever. This 
last decision of the Administration has spread dismay among 
the papers. They are bold enough to complain of it; and even the 
Patrie takes courage from despair, and utters a loud murmur. And 
what is worse, this measure is attributed by the public to the fear 
that Jules Favre’s speech on the mysteries of the ‘Jecker claim’ 
should be further alluded to in the press.”— Times. 

“ M. Baroche, the President of the French Council of State, 
declares, that he reads all the French newspapers every morning, 
and finds a complete liberty of discussion exercised by them all. 
M. Picard, also speaking in the Chambre Legislative, says that 
M. Baroche is the only man in France who, by reading the French 
papers, can arrive at that opinion; and he goes on to remark to 
M. Baroche, that messengers have been sent round to all the news¬ 
paper offices to prohibit any comment upon or analysis of the debate 
upon the Mexican affair.” 

“It appears,” says the Opinion Rationale, “that this tolerance, 
which presented no inconvenience two years ago, is felt to be 


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seriously inconvenient now, since the Administration has resolved to 
put a stop to it. Thus we have lost the little ground we had gained 
during two years. Instead of approaching us, liberty is further off. 
Why? We don’t know; and the Moniteur has not thought proper 
to tell us.” 

‘‘ Orders were issued to the editor of the Constitutionnel to write 
precisely the contrary of what he had written the day before. 
Whether from real conviction, or from a feeling of independence or 
of shame, the manager replied that it was really presuming too 
much on the good nature of his readers to so suddenly and so utterly 
stultify himself, and that the paper would suffer materially by so 
abrupt a change. The Minister at once answered by informing him 
that the resignation which he had left in his hands before his 
appointment, being now filled up, was accepted.” 

“The English newspapers are again confiscated, especially those 
which I mentioned last Wednesday. The Emperor is evidently 
confident in his strength, or he would scarcely have ventured upon 
an act which is conceived almost in the insolence of power. It is to 
be supposed that a time will come when the French press will so far 
regain the confidence and esteem of the French nation that the 
people will require its freedom. 

“ The most comical of all is, that the other day M. Baroche said in 
the Chamber, that (to use his own words) ‘whenever he had the 
misfortune to read the newspapers, what struck him was the freedom 
they enjoyed! ’ ” 

“ The Temps has received a communication from the Minister of the 
Interior, reminding it of the decree of 1852, prohibiting the pub¬ 
lication of any account of the debates in the Chambers except that 
which is made out under the supervision of the Presidents of the 
Legislative Chambers, or copied from the Moniteur; that any in¬ 
fraction of the 42nd Article of the Constitution is punishable by a 
fine of from l,000f. to 5,000f., and the infraction of the decree by a 
fine of from 50f. to 5,000f., ‘irrespectively of the penalties pre¬ 
scribed by the law, should the said report be an unfaithful or 
malicious one.’ The warning is repeated in the Moniteur, and the 
journals are informed that, if the infraction be repeated, criminal pro¬ 
ceedings will be taken against them. On this the Temps remarks :_ 

‘ In this state of things, and considering it impossible to find the 
ideal line which absolutely separates the discussion from the report; 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


93 


not having the certainty of distinguishing that which, in the eyes of 
the Minister, is permitted from that which is prohibited; and 
knowing by experience what it costs ns not to be, in doubtful 
matters, of the same sentiment as the Minister, we have taken the 
resolution not to say a word more on the debates on the Address, 
and consequently we suppress the article which the debate of 
yesterday on the affairs of Mexico suggested to us. As French 
citizens, we have the natural right to read these debates, to medi¬ 
tate, and to form an opinion upon them; but, despite our authoriza¬ 
tion, despite our caution money, and despite the stamp duty which 
we pay in order to be allowed to speak on public affairs, we are no 
longer sure of the right to express our opinion in our own paper, be 
that opinion right or wrong, at our own risk and peril, and to commu¬ 
nicate it to our fellow-citizens.’ We shall therefore, I presume, have 
no further comment of any kind on the debates in the Chambers.” 

“ Men can be kept silent by the fear of death, of chains, or of 
deportation, but the repression which teaches silence does not 
inculcate moderation, and political passions burn only the more 
fiercely for having been concealed.” 

‘‘Most of the Paris journals, but not the officially semi-official 
press, have announced their resolution of abstaining from all analysis 
or summary of the debates in the Legislative Chambers, in conse¬ 
quence of the last communique from the Minister of the Interior.” 

“A meagre epitome, prepared under the watchful eye of the 
President, is furnished to the evening papers, which they may use 
or not; so that the Government equally supplies the lengthened 
report and the miniature summary. I should not be surprised if, 
one of these days, the President furnished, not merely reports of the 
debates, but also the comments on them, for compulsory insertion in 
the papers.” 

“ The last few numbers were more disagreeable than usual;—an 
exceedingly interesting series of papers from Edgar Quinet, about 
1815, and the downfall of Napoleon I. ^ a review of French policy in 
Syria, &c. In the present number, again, VEsprit de Reaction, by 
Eemusat, giving a gloomy picture of the state of the public spirit in 
France; comments on a German book of travels in Austria, showing 
the wretched consequences of centralization; and the part of the 
Chronique which relates to the financial state of France as shown by 
the present crisis.” 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ Not only the name of a newly-appointed manager of a newspaper 
lias to be submitted to the Minister for approval, blit in order to 
hold the said manager tighter in his grasp, he forces him to deposit 
his resignation in blank, previous to his appointment.” 

“Two papers, the Akliba/r and the Courrier de V Alger ie, have been 
warned for having published lists of subscriptions. Marshal 
Pelissier declares that ‘ Algerian interests do not need subscriptions 
for their defence; that those interests are in the hands of the 
Emperor’s Government and of the authorities of Algiers, who will 
not let them be endangeredand, further, that he will not tolerate 
such manifestations. 

“ The press took the same side, and Marshal Pelissier is engaged at 
Algiers in actively imitating M. Persigny, and visiting journals with 
warnings for fomenting the agitation.” —Sergeant Glover . 

“ Every possible delay has been thrown in my way by the de¬ 
fendants, and by persons acting, as I am informed and believe, on 
their authority; that I have been compelled to take legal opinions 
in Paris as to the best way of compelling the defendants to proceed 
with the said commission, and have incurred great expenses, which 
have turned out entirely useless on account of the conduct of the 
defendants. That while sojourning in Paris, in order to attend the 
said commission, I was arrested on a flimsy pretext at my hotel, on 
the 30th of January, by three policemen, one of whom I was after¬ 
wards informed by a high personage in authority in Paris, was a 
member of the Count de Persigny’s secret police; that after being 
dragged from the hotel, I was throttled by two of the policemen, 
who stuck their knuckles into my neck and caused me very consider¬ 
able pain; that they also dragged me in a brutal and disgraceful 
manner through several public streets to two police-stations, at each 
of which I supplicated that some person should be sent to the 
English Embassy (very near thereto), in order that I might receive 
assistance or protection, but these police persons laughed at the 
proposition and treated it with ridicule; that I was then put into a 
cold and damp dungeon cell, the door locked, and there solitarily 
confined as a prisoner for several hours; that my health was very 
much injured from the brutal treatment and other disgraceful 
conduct which I then experienced, besides my clothes much torn by 
the police; and although unaware of having committed an offence, 
yet on being brought before a Commissary of Police, I was imme- 



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95 


cliately discharged, having been lectured and told, forsooth, that I 
must be very cautious while in Paris about my conduct, and avoid 
doing anything to cause my future arrest.”— Sergeant Glover. 

“ But what is worse than all this—worse perhaps than the disgrace 
of having made merchandise of his newspaper—is the overwhelming 
ridicule he sustains, through the fact that he has forfeited everything 
and gained nothing. H 9 has, as he says, rendered the disreputable .. 
service, but the master he has served throws him aside.” 

“We believe that there is no meanness, no cruelty, no injustice, no 
falsehood, no iniquity, of which they could not be guilty. But, alas ! 
according to his own confession, Mr. Sergeant Glover has been one 
of Louis Napoleon’s hirelings. What shall we say of him ? ” 

“Four or five years later, becoming desperately involved, he 
conceived the evil design of speculating on the fear of a scandal, 
and did not blush to commence legal proceedings with a view to 
making it a means of pecuniary profit. In June, 1862, pretending, 
contrary to all truth and probability, that he had been promised, 
from the 9th of May, 1857, a monthly subvention of £800 to 
conduct his journal in a sense favourable to a good understanding 
between France and England, Mr. Glover sued M. Billault, as 
Minister of the Interior in 1857, and Count cle Persigny, the present 
Minister, in the Court of Queen’s Bench for a sum of £14,000, as 
due to him for the promised subvention from the 9th of May, 1857, 
to 23rd of October, 1858. No arrangement of the kind had ever 
been made with Mr. Glover. No French Minister had ever offered 
or promised him money” (!!!)— Moniteur. 

“The defendants are all powerful persons, and the law’s delays 
are not unknown across the Channel. By some occult influences, 
the Commission of Inquiry has never sat, never examined, never 
made any report. It was a corrupt compact, by which articles of 
French manufacture were offered with an English mark, as of native 
production; and, by a well-merited retribution, the bargain dis¬ 
appointed all the parties to it. The French purchasers of political 
1 support’ gained nothing in ‘opinion,’ and lost any money they 
paid for what was at once contraband and counterfeit. The agent 
in the transaction reaped no permanent advantage, and the organ 
sold to a foreign Government perished by the effect of the compact, 
as by a blight.” 

“It would be premature, perhaps, to infer from the inaction of 


96 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE3 ? 


the Commission in Paris, and the collision of the plaintiff with the 
authorities, that the defendants repudiate, or purposely evade, pay¬ 
ment for the ‘work and labour done.’ But that a corrupt bargain 
should have brought no profit, is not to be regretted, for the sake of 
the example. In the old compact with the Fiend, the tempter is 
represented as lavish of his gifts, and rigorous only in exacting the 
forfeiture. In this case it looks as if the party who had made over 
the soul of a newspaper to a dark Power, were compelled to sue a 
shabby Mephistopheles for the equivalent.”— Times. 

“Men are commonly affected towards villains whom they have 
occasion for, just as they are towards venomous creatures which 
they have need of, for their poison and their gall ; while they are of 
use, they love them, but abhor them when their purpose is effected.” 
— Plutarch , “ RomulusP 

11 La France has received a first warning, for an article published 
yesterday, under the signature of M. Esparbie, on the elections.” 

“ The motive for the issue of the warning is stated to be that La 
France , in the article above mentioned, affected to express the secret 
sentiments of the Government, and distorted and travestied the 
policy pursued by the Government in the elections in a manner 
calculated to mislead public opinion.” 

“The avertissement which was recently sent to the editor of La 
France , is treated in Paris as another of the farces of the Ministry of 
the Interior, which now goes by the name of “La Comedie 
Politique.” 

“M. Lagueronniere’s paper, La France , has been visited with an 
avertissement, for an article on the elections in its number of the 16th. 
For M. Lagueronniere himself nobody feels much sympathy; indeed, 
he has little claims to any, for so long as he was Director of the 
Press he served as the ready instrument for inflicting on others, who 
deserved it no more than he now does, the penalty just imposed 
upon him. Yet the article in question was one of the most harmless 
that can be imagined.” 

‘ ‘ I mentioned yesterday the order given, at the instance of the 
Minister of the Interior, by the Minister of Justice, for the prosecu¬ 
tion of the Lmpartial Pauphinois, for publishing a letter of M. Oasimir 
Perier, on the finances, and which, according to the Minister, 

‘ excites hatred and contempt against the Emperor’s Government.’ ” 
“A provincial paper, La Foi Pretonne, has received a warning 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


97 


for an article on the elections. It appears that this unfortu¬ 
nate paper actually expressed doubts as to the sincerity of the 
elections, a doubt which M. de Persigny and his Prefect consider 
‘ calumnious.’ ” 

“The Pussian Ambassador has expostulated with the French 
Government on the impropriety of allowing assistance to be publicly 
sent to the Polish insurgents. When doing so, I understand that ho 
said it would be impossible to make a similar protest to Earl 
Pussell were the English acting as the French act, because the 
Government there cannot hinder the governed from doing so; 
whereas the Minister of the Interior, or even the Prefect of Police, 
has a right to close every subscription list in Paris, and could, if he 
chose, exercise this right unquestioned.” 

“ Here are men stepping forward to court martyrdom in this cause. 
M. Emilie Girardin signs an article in the Presse. He declares that 
he exercises the right of discussion at his own peril. He demands 
that “the Courts of Law, the Courts of Appeal, the Courts of 
Cassation, shall, by formal judgment, define that line of demarca¬ 
tion which the Senate will not take upon itself the responsibility of 
tracing.’ This means resistance. It is an appeal to public opinion 
in favour of a revival of the liberty of the press in France. The 
tone is taken up and comes back re-echoed. Even great properties 
seem likely to be placed in jeopardy, and earnest, hot-headed men 
are ready to go to prison—perhaps to Cayenne. It may come to 
nothing; it may cause an explosion. It is as yet but a lambent 
flame, passed along the mouth of the mine, just to see if there is 
any powder there. 

“ Paris, February 8. 

“Sir,—The attitude you have assumed for some time past, the 
object of which evidently is to make use of the powers you hold 
from me to dispossess me of the management of the Constitutionnel 
and the Pays, compels me to dispense with your services. Forced as 
I was by an irresistible pressure to appoint you political director of 
those two papers, I nevertheless accepted you in all good faith. 
But you, your protectors, and your associates have organized against 
me a vast intrigue in order to oust me. 

“ Manoeuvres of such a kind are sufficiently baffled by exposing 
them, and they fully justify the step which I am forced to take 
against you. I regret, therefore, to have to inform you that your 

G 




98 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 

functions as political and literary director of tlie united journals 
liave ceased. 

“Accept, Sir, &c., 

“Viscount D’Auciiald, 

“ Managing Director.” 

“But MM. Baroclie and Billault liave laboured to incite tlie 
French to do the very thing of which the Emperor stands most in 
dread, by making them suppose that an Imperial throne is only a 
card-house on a gigantic scale, and might be knocked down at any 
moment by anybody who chooses to blow against it .”—Liberal 
Paper. 

“The French Academy is now the last resting-place in France of 
freedom of thought and of the independence which bows down 
before genius or great intellectual achievements, and stands erect in 
the presence of military despotism .”—Saturday Review. 

“Public men, when removed to Paris, become as fond of arrests, 
and warnings, and ‘invitations,’ and seizures, and the suppression 
of associations, and the reproving of public speakers, and of 
pompous paragraphs in the Moniteur , and mysterious articles in the 
semi-official papers, as any Bonapartist Prefect in the depths of the 
provinces. ”—Liberal Paper. 

“The insult has been too gross, and the oppression too heavy, to 
permit the few men of honour and intellect still left in the ranks of 
French journalists to be altogether silent .”—Saturday Review. 

“When a dangerous discussion is impending, the Government 
intimidate the journals with ambiguous warnings and lialf-hinted 
menaces which may mean much, little, anything, or nothing.”— lb. 

“All things considered, it appears hopeless to look for any 
essential change in the legal position of the French newspaper press, 
except as the result of other changes, of which there is as yet no 
visible sign. The chain may be tightened a little at one time and 
loosened a little at another time, but in accepting the Empire, 
France necessarily accepts a fettered and enslaved press .”—Saturday 
Review. 

“Imperialism is not fond of precise meanings, which may be 
turned against itself. Nature does not abhor a vacuum more 
cordially than despotism abhors accurate definitions of constitutional 
privileges. ’ ’— lb . 

“The truth is, the Minister has perceived that he committed a 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


99 


blunder, and, though not persisting in it, has made an ineffectual 
attempt to justify it.” 

“ Beneath the strong full flood of the Emperor’s power, which 
sweeps the surface of things into a calm, dignified as ‘ order, ’ these 
panegyrists of the Second Empire do not discern that French genius 
and intellect lie drowned. Napoleon has indeed made France rich 
and busy—he has taught her to speculate successfully, beautified 
her capital, forced the benefits of free-trade upon her, and violently 
educated her unwdlling mind. But all that is truly valuable as 
products of the national genius—its spontaneous graces, its natural 
developments, its gifts which, being indigenous, grow best—these 
the Second Empire has ruthlessly strangled. Like a man who 
should hack and hew away the wild flowers and native plants of a 
wood side, and raise in their places trim Dutch hedges and dwarfed 
exotics, Napoleon has uprooted or smothered the old intellectual life 
of France. He has done it not by this or that edict, but by 
universally suppressing liberty of thought and writing, which is to 
the intellect what the fresh air is to healthy growths .”—Daily 
Telegraph. 

“The Emperor of France wants no pretext given him for war. 
People make too much of the Eastern question as a reason to 
restrain him from giving his subjects the ‘spectacle and the glory’ 
of constituting ‘ another nation.’ War abroad means, for the Empire, 
quiet and security at home; and as Mexico may soon be off his 
hands, something new must be devised. Nothing could suit better 
than such a cause as that of Poland, with Prussia entangled on the 
side of tyranny, and the Khine glittering as the reward of the 
armed apostle of freedom everywhere except at home.”— lb. 

“I do not desire administrative despotism, which with one stroke 
of the pen destroys, now the Association Bretonne, and now the 
Society of St. Yincent de Paul; and which even goes so far as to 
prohibit the most honest men of Paris from giving public lectures 
for the benefit of the distressed cotton operatives. I do not wish to 
see our finances endangered, our taxes progressively augmented, our 
resources absorbed by the capital, or in costly and sterile expe¬ 
ditions.’ ’— Montalembert. 

“ The new regulations in force since the first of the present month, 
with respect to songs sung in coffee-houses and other public places, 
are enforced with the greatest severity. Besides the visa of the 

L.ofC. 02 


100 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Minister of State to be endorsed on every piece of music, there are 
special inspectors appointed, whose duty it is to watch that nothing 
is added. A number of popular songs have in consequence been 
expunged. ”— Liberal Paper. 

“The Russian Ambassador in Paris has remonstrated rather 
warmly with the Government for tolerating the animadversions and 
caricatures of a portion of the French press on Polish affairs. Fie 
was the more earnest in his remonstrances, as it teas known to every 

one THAT THE PRESS IS AT THE MERCY OF THE MINISTER OF THE 
Interior, ivho does not allow authority to lie idle in Ms hands ; and he 
felt that it was strange such liberties should be taken with a Power 
like Russia, which is in such friendly relations with France.”— 

Times. 

“ Friday last was remarkable for the number of convictions of the 
press in Paris by the Tribunal of Correctional Police of the Seine.” 
—Ib. 

“We are resolved to persist in the reserve which is imposed upon 
us not only by prudence, but also by a feeling of dignity, which our 
readers will understand. In the new position in which we are 
placed, we are not quite sure if we are not exceeding our rights by 
stating that the Chamber has voted the 5th Paragraph of the 
Address, relating to America, and has commenced the discussion of 
Paragraph 6, relating to Italy. With still greater reason we dare 
not praise, as we should like to do, the speeches of M. Anatole 
Lemercier and of M. Jules Favre; the former on the American 
question, the latter on the Roman question; for, as the Opinion 
Rationale observes, should perchance the Government not share 
our views on the subject, we should not know whether our praise 
might not be considered as tending, according to the logic of the 
Constitutionnelj to 1 give a false account of the debate.’ ” —French 
Paper. 

“The Journal des JDebats has received a second warning for an 
article by M. Prevost Paradol on the elections. The Journal des 
Villes et Campagnes has received a first avertissement for an article by 
M. Herve, on the elections.”— Times. 

“ The ingenuity of the Prefects in discovering pretexts for terrify¬ 
ing the j>ress, is taxed to the utmost, as the period of the elections 
approaches. ’ ’— lb. 

“I should astonish you, probably, by telling you that there are 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


101 


no Bonapartists in France. Here people are Legitimists and Re¬ 
publicans by conviction, Orleanists by interest, religious by fashion. 
They are Bonapartists through circumstances, love of order, fear of 
emonies, and hatred of 1815.”— Liberal Paper. 

“The Journal des Debats , in spite of all its caution and all its 
prudence, is at this moment in the same condition as so many of its 
less reflecting contemporaries,—that is, completely at the mercy of 
the Minister of the Interior, who may suspend, or even suppress it, 
with or without cause assigned. M. Persigny may boast of having 
established an authority over the harmless press of France beyond 
what any previous Minister has ventured upon. Still it is unwise 
to proclaim, as he does, by these frequent avertissements, the un¬ 
easiness which the prospect of half-a-dozen independent candidates 
seeking the suffrages of the constituency occasions him, particularly 
where these candidates are men of commanding ability, of experi¬ 
ence in public affairs, and of more social and political eminence than 
suits his notions of what members of a French Legislative Body 
should be.”— Times. 

“ The manager of a newspaper, while the laws remain as they are, 
cannot be independent so long as there is a Director of the Press 
attached to the Department of the Interior, and so long as news¬ 
paper property is entirely at the mercy of the Government. Justly 
or unjustly, such a man will always be suspected; and it will be 
impossible for him, intrusted as he is with property to a large 
amount, and which may be lost by a simple decree, to be completely 
independent of official influence. Until the laws which affect the 
press are modified, the electors should give their confidence to a 
candidate who is not bound by such considerations, rather than to 
one who is not, and who cannot be, a free agent.”— Liberal Paper. 

“The indignant M. de Cassagnac reminds his rival (M. Lague- 
ronniere) that if among the supporters of the Imperial Government 
there were any who in a moment of doubt or danger ‘ mistrusted 
the Liberalism and the intellect of the Prince, and protested against 
the Liberating Act (? ?) of the 2nd of December 5 (the coup d’etat), that 
man was M. Lagueronniere himself, who was then a Republican 
journalist. With much bitterness, though not without some truth, 
M. de Cassagnac reminds him of the manner in which his conversion ivas 
brought about , by high honours and lucrative posts for himself and his 
friends . } ’— Times. 


102 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ As the elections approach, the calamities of newspapers increase. 
Avertissements are raining thick and heavy upon them, and the press 
will soon he terrified into absolute silence on a subject which, more 
than any other, requires to be treated by it. Last week we had a 
few warnings administered by the Minister of the Interior. Yester¬ 
day’s Moniteur contains two. One paper, the Journal de Rennes , is 
suspended for two months, having been warned twice already ; and 
another, the Union de V Ouest, is passing through the ordeal of 
avertissements , doubtless to prepare it for the same fate. The former 
had an article on the elections, from which the Minister quotes the 
first and concluding words,—‘Behold a political event,’ and ‘It will 
sufficiently edify our electors,’ and which he describes as ‘containing 
calumnious allegations against the Government of the Emperor, and 
attaching the faith due to the electoral oath, of which it misrepresents the 
sense and the extent .’ The latter had a notice of M. Proudhon’s last 
pamphlet, beginning with the words, ‘ The pamphlet expected with 
so much curiosity,’ and ending, ‘ The victory will perhaps be less 
rebellious than we in our discouragement imagine.’ This article also 
wounds the Minister's exquisite sensitiveness about the sacred character 
of a solemn pledge ; and the Prefect, on his authority, considers that 
‘ the author of the articles has attempted a blow at the sanctity of 
the electoral oath.’ I may add, that private and trustworthy 
accounts from some of the departments state that much irritation 
prevails, in consequence of the means employed to intimidate the 
electors, and to secure the return of the official nominees.”— Liberal 
Taper . 

“No doubt the press of Prance, always dangerous to established 
authority, and little apt to recognize those needful principles of self- 
imposed moderation, which are the strength and the safeguard of a 
newspaper in a country like England, demands anxious care and 
attention at the hands of the Government. But under the auspices 
of M. de Persigny, the Erench press is reduced to a state of collapse, 
which renders it incapable of discharging the real duties of a press 
at all. It must not make comments; it must not relate facts dis¬ 
pleasing to the Government of the Emperor. The best intentions 
and the greatest caution avail nothing, and the ablest and most 
eloquent writers under such a regime become intolerably tedious and 
insipid. The country no longer expects to find truth in its news¬ 
papers, and, in the effort to prevent them from doing mischief, they 


0TIGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


103 


have been deprived of the opportunity of doing any kind of good. 
So it is with the elections. Universal suffrage is, no doubt, a 
difficult institution to manage, but the Minister of the Interior has 
so paraded and overacted the interference of the Government, that 
he has made the candidates whom it supports contemptible, and 
those whom it opposes really formidable. He has so committed tho 
Government, that it is in the power of any electoral district and of 
any popular candidate to inflict upon it a very serious defeat. He 
has put the Government so openly in the lists, as to leave all other 
candidates, except those whom he supports, no choice between sub¬ 
mission and rebellion. ’ ’— Times. 

It is said, the editor of a well-known foreign journal, profess¬ 
ing liberal principles, recently visited Paris. Soon after his arrival 
the accomplished redacteur of La France called upon him, and being 
aware of his talent and influence, endeavoured to enlist him under 
the Imperial banner; assuring him that he would make his fortune, 
and share largely, not only in the bounty, but in the hospitality of 
the Emperor, if he would only adopt the very simple expedient of 
changing his principles; which, he could tell him from experience, 
could be accomplished half-a-dozen times in the course of a few 
years, and, according to circumstances, without any inconvenience, 
or compunction, or loss of character. 

<£ Suivez moi vous aurez tin lien meilleur destin: ” 

L’ami reprit, u Qne faut-il faire ?” 

“ Flatter ceux du logis a son maitre complaire, 

Yous aurez, outre un gros salaire, 

Les plats les plus exquis de toutes les fagons, 

Faisans, poulets, perdrix, pigeons, 

Sans parler de mainte caresse.” 

“ On in’a dit, cependant, que yous n’imprimez pas 

Ce qu’il yous plait ?” “ Pas toujours, mais qu’importe ?” 

u II importe si Men, que, de tous yos repas 
Je ne veux en aucune sorte, 

Et ne voudrais pas meme a ce prix un tresor ; M 
Cela dit, il s’enfuit, loyal et libre encore. 


La Fontaine, 


104 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


III .—Freedom and Purity of Flection . 

That country enjoys tlie fairest prospect of happiness and security 
in which a constitutional king is placed at the head of affairs, and 
the people exercise a salutary control over the proceedings and policy 
of his ministers, through the medium of free and independent 
assemblies. But the case is widely different when there are only 
“ eadum magistratuum vocabula,” and liberty is, so far as efficient 
control on the part of the national representatives is concerned, only 
“ magni nominis umbra.” There is as complete a contrast as 
between two banquets, at the one of which all the choicest and most 
wholesome viands are served up in rich abundance; whilst at the 
other, although the bill of fare is nominally identical, the dishes are 
either empty, or present no food but what is either obnoxious to the 
system, or insipid to the taste. In France, under the Decemberist 
regime , the rich clusters of freedom have been entirely removed, and 
the wild grapes of despotism and intrigue substituted in their place. 
How melancholy and mortifying is, in this respect, the condition of 
that noble country, so far as regards the feelings and aspirations of 
every honest and patriotic mind, since the base and bloody triumph 
of perjury and murder has ushered in a system, under which the 
existence of what are called “deliberative assemblies” only adds 
insult to injury, and exhibits in a more odious light the base and 
brutal effrontery of a cruel and callous despot! 

“ What Napoleonism was at the beginning, that it is and will be 
to the end. It is not, and never was, intended that electors should 
elect; and political discussion, which assumes that fundamental 
postulate of Constitutional Government, whether it take the shape 
of serious argument or playful irony, is inevitably proscribed as an 
anomaly and a nuisance. Even the most temperate and decorous 
criticism on an Imperial speech is, as we have just seen in the case 
of the Temps, an unendurable piece of presumption .”—Saturday 
Review . 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


105 


“The Ministers and the Prefects and the Mayors are his con¬ 
stituents ; and, if he be a Government candidate, the machinery 
they can set in motion will in most instances work him safely back 
into the Chambers in spite of all opponents. And so it will continue 
until the freedom of Parliamentary election cease to be the mere 
myth which it now is in France.”— Liberal Paper. 

“In virtue of orders transmitted from Paris, the departmental 
authorities are already beginning to convene the tax collectors and 
other officers of the Ministry of Finance, as well as the justices of 
the peace, for the purpose of recommending them to vote for the 
Governmental candidates at the next elections. Amongst the nume¬ 
rous deputies, who will be sacrificed because they have fulfilled what 
was expected of them, is one who will be sure to meet with the most 
energetic opposition on the part of the Government.”— II. 

“ The Prefects are instructed to profit by this occasion to rouse the 
zeal of the Sub-Prefects; to remind the Mayors of their duty to 
promote the return of official candidates; to exhort the gardes cham- 
petres to do their duty; and in a word, to put in motion the whole 
machinery of State for the purpose of ‘directing universal suf¬ 
frage.’ The month of May will be devoted to this work, and the 
elections will follow soon after.”— Times. 

11 The expense of a canvass at present to an unprotected candidate 
is, it appears, horn 8,000 francs to 10,000 francs. The newspaper 
that would animadvert on the malpractices of a mayor covering with 
his official protection the very barndoor fowls and domestic animals 
of the peasant who votes for the protected candidate, and leaving 
those of the voter who acts otherwise to the mercy of their enemy, 
would probably have but a short existence. These, however, are 
mere details; but the strangest fact is, that a constituency of only 
240,000, as under the July Government, should have given 459 
representatives; and that universal suffrage, as now in force, sends 
only 256 to the Legislative Corps.”— lb. 

“The French Constitution disfranchises the political classes in 
favour of the Imperialist peasantry.”— Saturday Review. 

“ The peasant is timid; he does not like to provoke the enmity of 
the officials; he feels that he is under the eyes of those that hardly 
ever slumber.”— lb. 

“ It has not yet succeeded in conciliating educated opinion, 
although it is supported by popular feeling and prejudice.”— lb. 


106 


OUGHT FRANCE TO “WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ Not a man present but perfectly understood the hint conveyed in 
this short sentence —* You will not lose sight of the fact, during the 
present Session, that your attitude and your language will exercise 
a considerable influence on the dispositions and the minds of the 
electors.’ In other words, if you offer opposition or give any trouble 
to the Government, you will lose your seats. So it was understood 
by all, and none can hereafter plead ignorance.”— Times. 

“For several days past there have been various complaints about 
the obstacles which persons are said to encounter in the application 
at the Mairies to have their names placed on the electoral lists.” 

“The dissolution of the Chamber is believed at last to have been 
decided upon. The coming elections will probably be distinguished 
by the same shameless admixture of coercion and fraud which have 
rendered these fictions a world’s wonder.” 

“Freedom of commerce is a valuable boon the Emperor has con¬ 
ferred upon his subjects, but freedom of public opinion is more 
valuable still, and in this last respect France is less free than it was 
at any time under the Empire.”— Times. 

“The Mayor may manipulate the lists as he thinks proper, may 
refuse to let the electors see whether their names are enrolled, and 
before taking proceedings against him they must obtain the per¬ 
mission of the Council of State, the said Mayor being an agent of 
the Government. It will readily be believed that there are few 
electors who will incur the expense and trouble of such an 
operation.” 

“It is said the Prefects of departments recommend the Govern¬ 
ment to have the elections this year, and that thus it will be sure 
of a large working majority, for which they will not so confidently 
answer if delayed until next year, as the opposition to the Govern¬ 
ment is gathering strength. There can be no doubt whatever that 
there is a vast and increasing amount of discontent in France, and 
that much of it is on account of the expense gone to in vast armaments 
and for foreign military expeditions, of the necessity or utility of 
which people are not to be persuaded.” 

Je sais que, pres de vous, injuste ou legitime, 

Le plus leger soup 9011 tient toujours lieu de crime, 

Que c’est etre proscrit que d’etre soupconne, 

Que yotre coeur enfin n’a jamais pardonne. 


Crebillon. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


107 


A few symptoms [have lately appeared on behalf of the partisans 
of freedom and honesty, to counteract the manoeuvres and machina¬ 
tions of desperate and disquieted Imperialism; but every possible 
device is resorted to for the purpose of stifling or suppressing them. 

“ The avertissement which the Steele has received from the Govern¬ 
ment may be regarded as the most important political event that has 
occurred in Paris since the Coup cVetat. For ten years there has been 
nothing like a public protest against the illegal career by which, as 
a general rule, the Ministers of the Interior have thought to secure 
an unlimited budget and unlimited authority. Individuals have 
frequently lifted up their voices against this abuse of power, and 
have been exiled or imprisoned for it. 

“At the end of the decade which was commenced on the 2nd 
December, 1852, it seems as though the elite of France were uniting 
in a compact body for the purpose of putting a stop to any further 
aggressions on the part of the authorities. They are satisfied to let 
them have for the present all they got in ’52, but at ’62 they must 
stop. In the name of the law, they say they can go no further—at 
least, so say all the eminent members of the French bar, no matter 
whether [Republican, Orleanist, or Legitimist. The French journal¬ 
ists have raised the question which called forth this demonstration. 
The Liberal press, it may be remembered by all your readers, a short 
time ago noticed some flagrant abuses in the application of the 
statute which established universal suffrage. They did not criticise 
any law, or the respective merits of the several dynasties who set up 
their claims to the French throne. They simply acted on Count 
Persigny’s edict, and made in a very moderate tone some comments 
on the application of the electoral law in France; and far from 
throwing a slur on the constitution framed by the present Emperor, 
contended that those by whom it was administered should treat it as 
a living instead of a dead letter. Communiques, ominously severe, 
were the consequence. The aggrieved parties then submitted the 
articles for which they were reprimanded to the most eminent legists 
in France, who are avocats of the Cour Imperiale, the Council of 
State, and the Cour de Cassation, such as MM. Dufaure, an ex-officio 
Minister of Justice and bdtonnier of the Paris bar, Marie, Hebert, 
Cremieux, Odilon-Barrot, Senard, Freslon,—all men who filled the 
same posts with honour to themselves—Demarest, Emile Ollivier, 
Picard, Baze, Emmanuel Arago, Leroux, Lachaud, and seventy- 


108 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


nine besides, who, if not all eminent, are in a fair way to attain tbe 
highest places in their profession/’— Morning Star. 

“The leading members of the profession in the departments are 
to be referred to; and it is calculated that from 1,000 to 1,500 will 
signify in writing their concurrence with their confreres of Paris. It 
is intended that these opinions shall be published in the form of a 
pamphlet, if any printer can be got bold enough to print it.”— lb. 

“If we may believe the reports of persons who have visited the 
departments with a view to the elections, there are signs of the 
revival of a political spirit in most of the larger towns, and some of 
the smaller ones. The same cannot be said, they frankly admit, of 
the rural districts generally. The town population exercise a certain 
degree of liberty which the peasants do not.” 

“Porlong there has been an agitation going on in France to 
promote a revision of the electoral lists. In the opinion of many of 
the most eminent jurists both in Paris and in the departments, the 
present practice is most unconstitutional. The result of such a 
revision might be the return of some additional ‘ liberal ’ members 
of Parliament, and as this would be highly distasteful to the Im¬ 
perial Government, it has determined to put down all agitation on 
the subject with a high hand. The Minister of the Interior has im- 
posed silence on the Press by launching an ( avertisseinent ’ at the 
Sieele. Our outspoken contemporary and Moniteur of the Palais 
Poyal, the Opinion National , has likewise received a second warn¬ 
ing for the publication of an article entitled 1 Martyrdom of the 
Clerical Party.’ The motives of the warning are that the Opinion 
Nationals, 1 notwithstanding that it has received several semi-official 
warnings, has continued to falsely attribute all the acts of the 
Government to what it terms ‘ clerical influences, ’ and to misre¬ 
present the liberal intentions of the Government of the Emperor.’ 
This second warning places the property entirely at the mercy of the 
Minister , who, when he next takes offence, may without further 
procedure order the publication to cease.”— Bell's Messenger. 

“In order to fortify its view, the Sieele obtained the opinion of 
some of the most eminent jurists of the day, among whom I need 
only mention MM. Dufaure, Marie, Berryer, Jules Favre, Placque, 
Odilon-Barrot, Hebert, Cremieux, and Senard, who still hold the 
highest rank in the profession, and who have, some of them, 
occupied the highest posts as Ministers or Legislators; besides 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


109 


others whose names, though less known abroad, are regarded as 
legal authorities at home. The opinions of these jurists were given 
yesterday at some length in the Siecle , in refutation of the ‘ com¬ 
municated,’ or official, articles on the other side. The Minister of 
the Interior has, however, closed the discussion by means of an 
‘ avertissement, ’ backed by a long ‘ communique ,’ which admit of no 
reply. There is no one like the Prefect of Police for peremptory 
answers of this kind. The Siecle publishes the 1 avertissement ’ in 
to-day’s number as well as the communique , which is a mere work of 
supererogation. ”— Times. 

“The ‘black man’ was lately sent round to the journals with an 
intimation that Grovernment would permit no further discussion on 
the subject of the electoral districts.”— London Liberal Taper. 

“ The time allowed for revision is very short, and the electors are 
earnestly exhorted by the Liberal press to make the most of it. 
Such facilities as the jealous vigilance of the authorities allows may, 
however, be tinned to account.”— lb. 

11 The population will at last understand how important it is for 
them to be represented by persons chosen outside the limit of the 
influence of the Grovernment which it is their duty to watch and 
control.” 

“ M. Paradol actually does not scruple to suggest that it might 
be advantageous to distribute blank voting tickets to the electors, 
which they might fill in with the names of the candidates of their 
preference, instead of issuing, as at present, printed tickets already 
inscribed with the names of the candidates approved by the Prefect. 
He has the audacity to think it possible that, if electors were left to 
name for themselves the men of their choice, instead of having a 
choice made for them by the Prefect, the ballot-urns might, in some 
instances, yield a more genuine expression of the electoral mind.”— 
Saturday Review. 

The despicable and despotic expedients resorted to for ensuring 
the exclusive return of Imperial courtiers and creatures to the Legis¬ 
lature are a snare, a trap, and a stumbling-block to the entire popu¬ 
lation. Some eminent members of the educated and enlightened 
classes intend to appear as candidates at the impending election; a 
course which, I confess, appears to me neither dignified nor desirable. 
It would, in my judgment, be more consistent and creditable to “let 
the dead bury their dead,” and say to Imperialism, “ What have I 


110 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

to do witli thee ? ” Even those public writers who are favourable to 
this step adduce such arguments as seems to militate against its 
wisdom and its propriety. I should have thought that they would 
have felt, “ cette juste fierte de l’homme superieur qui lie peut sup¬ 
porter une concurrence indigne .”—La Harpe. 

“ ‘The Government candidate,’ a deputy said in the Chamber the 
other day, ‘ has the whole of the local authorities at his beck. His 
name is published in the official placards, and he has only to wait 
the issue, which is generally favourable. The candidate of the 
Opposition, on the other hand, has to face one, and sometimes two, 
arrondissements. He has nearly 200 communes to visit, and he 
must find agents who are not likely to be frightened by threats. 
No newspaper will venture to advocate his claims, and he has some¬ 
times to go a hundred leagues to find a printer to print his circulars 
or his voting tickets.’ From the language of the Ministerial journal, 
it is feared that some new and more stringest test will be applied to 
obnoxious candidates, with a view to deter them from a contest.” 

“ Orleanist, Legitimist, and Ultramontanist are blended in one 
undistinguishable phalanx. There is no difference to note between 
them. Religion, politics, sympathies, and antipathies are all the 
same. We might quote their speeches in detail, but it would be a 
futile repetition. Nothing but the name at the beginning of the 
speech could inform us whether the orator was a bigot or an unbe¬ 
liever, a Republican or a disciple of the divine right of kings. 
They have but one cast of countenance, one voice, one manner, one 
thought. There is a monotony of hatred, an uniformity of dis¬ 
appointment.” 

“ If M. Thiers persist in coming forward as a candidate, he will 
not refuse us the right of opposing him. Neither will he contest 
the right of the electors to vote against him, and this will be done 
by all friends to the Imperial institutions.”— Persigny. 

“In the Ariege a committee is about to be formed, and several 
private meetings of the few the law allows to meet have been held to 
discuss the merits of candidates.”— Times. 

“ Some of the Prefects think that to obtain a Chamber such as 
the Government desires, the sooner the campaign opens, after the 
minimum of delay, the better. Others, on the contrary, are for allow¬ 
ing the longest time possible before beginning operations. The 
truth is, these functionaries are in a state of intense anxiety. The 


OUGHT ERANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAJPARTES ? 


Ill 


capacity of a Prefect is best tested by the deputies be can send 
up to the Chamber. His hopes of advancement depend upon his success , 
and his success compensates his anguish during the struggle , and opens to 
him the most brilliant prospects, as failure may stop his career . Some of 
the most daring are impatient to encounter the peril at once, for 
suspense is a torture, while the more timid would postpone it to the 
last.”— Times. 

“A period like this is one of intense anxiety to Prefects, Sub¬ 
prefects, and Mayors. Woe to the man who allows an 1 independent ’ 
candidate to defeat the favourite of the 1 Administration.’ The Pre¬ 
fect of the second or third class is sure to lose all chance of advance¬ 
ment. The Sub-prefect must renounce every hope of rising, and 
consider himself lucky indeed if he is not dismissed the service. I 
have heard of letters from some of these subordinates to their friends 
the Mayors, adjuring them by the sacredness of friendship to secure 
the return of the official candidate, for upon it his long-cherished 
hopes of promotion or even his continuance in his present position 
depend.” 

‘ 1 The Constitution requires the oath of allegiance to the Emperor, 
not merely from the elected deputy, but from the candidate before he 
issues a single address to his constituents. That oath M. Thiers and 
those who go with him have made up their minds to take and to keep. 
The Constitution is not satisfied with less, but it requires no more.” 

“ Preliminary condition of the oath was a consideration to some 
who did not conceal that it was repugnant to their feelings; but they 
who regarded it as an insurmountable objection were the fewest in 
number. On the whole, it was admitted to be a matter for the con¬ 
science of each individual. There were a few also who, though 
approving those who were willing to come forward at the elections 
and comply with all indispensable conditions, prefer remaining in 
private life, not on political, but on strictly personal grounds.” 

11 There have been, as you know, liberal professions in abundance, 
from the highest quarters; but, strange enough, the more liberal 
these are the more rigorous is the practice.”— Times. 

u On the whole, it is calculated that about 15 new members will 
be sent to the Chamber, and thus raise the independent minority 
from 5 to 20.”— lb. 

“ The benevolence of the ‘Administration’ towards the consti¬ 
tuency is, on occasions like the present, all but unbounded. It is 


112 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


shown in the lavish bestowal of bureaux de tabac , drinking fountains, 
watering places for animals, books, plaster busts and portraits of the 
Emperor and his family, and sometimes of the Ministers, to pro¬ 
vincial libraries and town halls ; not forgetting altar-pieces to 
churches in the small towns and villages where the clergy have 
influence. Little gifts like these refresh the memory and excite 
gratitude. They are not, of course, for corruption; but the recipients 
best show the sense of the favours conferred on them by choosing 
deputies worthy of themselves, and of the Government.”— Times. 

“ Of these the most important is that, however broad the basis of 
the Imperial Government, it does not rest on the support of what in 
one place he calls ‘the educated class,’ and in another ‘the higher 
classes of French society.’ This refractory element, which, we fear, 
includes no small proportion of the intellectual aristocracy, of the 
Institute, of the Bar, and even of the clerical body since the Italian 
war, has hitherto, it seems, fostered ‘ a sort of mistrust and mis¬ 
understanding ’ of the ruling powers. These persons, not altogether 
insignificant in number or political weight, have hitherto been per¬ 
verse enough to be in Opposition, and have even been known to 
complain that the Government was a ‘dictatorship,’ and that ‘the 
intervention of the country in its own affairs was not sufficiently 
perceptible? ” 

“ The present position of the Emperor is such that M. Thiers may 
be considered equally justified in remembering or forgetting that it 
was by the orders of this man that he and all the flower of states¬ 
manship and high renown in France were seized on in the dead of a 
December night, and hurried off to prison like criminals.” 

“ Those who have long taunted the Emperor with the violation of 
the oaths he had taken, and who have held up to execration his 
deceitfulness and lip-service, may mutually shrink from an act 
which has so strong a resemblance to such crimes as that of swearing 
to be faithful to him while their hatred of him is undiminished.” 

“ There ought to be no condonation for men who have done the 
things he has done. History ought never to gloss over the iniquity of 
such crimes as the coup d’etat, or over the sad series of crimes—many of 
them , perhaps , originally unpremeditated—to which ail act of violence and 
treachery like the coup d’etat gives birth , when all its consequences begin 
to press on the actors. We should soon lose all our sense of justice, 
and of right and wrong in history, if we allowed ourselves to speak 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


113 


with, indifference of crimes because the criminals happen to be suc¬ 
cessful. But in practical life we must to a certain extent accept 
what happens.” (! !)—Saturday Review. 

u A certain number of deputies have taken courage from despair. 
They are those who, though docile and submissive, have yet on cer¬ 
tain occasions incurred the anger of the Minister by their votes, and 
who are consequently to be superseded. These gentlemen think 
that as they have earned the hostility of the Minister by one or two 
acts of independence, they may as well go the whole length. When 
the Budget comes on for discussion they are resolved to make an 
onslaught on M. Persigny, for his instructions to the prefects on the 
elections—instructions which have so revolted the Mayors, that some 
have petitioned against being forced into proposing or supporting 
official candidates.”— Times. 

u With these terrible threats of fine, imprisonment, not to speak of 
the lasting disgrace that awaits them, the thought arises how is it that, 
as occurred on certain recent occasions, voting tickets of electors have 
been found, not in the dark recesses of the ballot-box, but in the 
breeches pockets, the pipkins, the domestic vases of every sort and 
size, and, I believe, in the very nightcaps of rural Mayors. Some of 
these functionaries must have exhibited in these operations a skill in 
legerdemain which would have done honour to Robert Houdin, but 
which invariably turned to the advantage of the official candidate.” 

“In 1863, the Count cle Persigny, Minister of the Interior, proposes 
to you a stranger. You have hitherto given to me an immense majority. 
You are asked to contradict yourselves. What, then, has occurred 
between 1857 and 1863 ? The Chamber of Deputies, desiring to 
reject the principle of hereditary dotations, chose me for its organ. 
It was a mission of confidence, from which a sentiment of honour 
forbade me to withdraw. I performed that task with moderation 
but without feebleness. There are men who approve all the acts of 
the Government; there are others who oppose them systematically. 
I am among neither the one nor the other. I prefer to conform 
myself to the will of the Emperor, demanding of the deputies to vote 
according to their conscience .”—Independent Candidate. 

“In spite of the impediment thrown in the way of publicity, the 
light is apiDearing, and all that a misdirected zeal can do will never 
persuade you that a man is the enemy of the Government and of 
your best interests because he resists those tendencies which in ten 

n 


114 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


years have added more than 3,000,000,000 f.,—near 100,000,000 f. 
interest—to our public debt. That debt was, in 1830, 164,000,000 f., 
and in 1848, 176,000,000 f. Eighteen years of representative 
government had increased it only by 12,000,000 f. In 1852 it was 
230,000,000 f., and at this day it exceeds 327,000,000 f. In ten 
years it has increased by 97,000,000 f., deducting the reserves and 
sinking fund dotation, which would raise it to 503,000,000 f. These 
ten years have seen the Budget, fixed at 1,500,000,000 f. for the 
service of 1852, gradually raised to 2,200,000,000 f., showing an 
annual augmentation of 700,000,000 f. in the expenditure, and con¬ 
sequently in the charges on the country. Nothing can add force to 
the eloquence of these figures. It will not be disregarding your 
interests to blame the multiplicity of the enterprises which summon 
every year 100,000 men to the ranks of the army, nor to demand tho 
reduction of taxation and the extension of municipal franchises.”— 
Independent Candidate. 

“ At the last elections M. Bosselet, who then also was a candidate, 
had the mortification to see his placards torn down by the agents of 
the authorities, and, to still greater mortification, to see nobody was 
punished for it.” 

“ If a single member of the Opposition be returned, most assuredly 
it will not be the fault of the Minister. He has summoned the con¬ 
stituents to name the official candidates, and no others. He has 
launched a sentence of excommunication against all those who will not 
sue for the protection of the Prefect, and has attempted to charge 
them with a foregone violation of their oath. People talk loosely of 
a minority in the new Chamber of 20, 30, or even 40. I much 
doubt it. I hardly think there will be half a dozen in addition to 
the five who have stood their ground in spite of all difficulties. How 
. can such a minority increase ? Electoral committees are prohibited 
from meeting in the departments; the press has been warned not to 
publish a word about them, under threats of prosecution; and, to 
prove that the minister is in earnest, he has suspended one paper for 
two months. The very vocabulary is changed in favour of the 
official candidate and against the independent one. A Paris journal 
recently founded, and founded, one would suppose, merely to show 
to what depth thorough baseness can reach, calls those who refuse to 
crawl before the Prefect ‘ Tartuffes while the term ‘independents/ 
applied to them is strictly forbidden.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


115 


“ The Minister has rejected a certain number of deputies who had 
been favoured with official support in the last elections, and he lias 
done so not on account of any divergence of opinion, but because, in 
spite of their fidelity for the last six years, they do not appear to 
him to be sufficiently devoted to the dynasty.” 

11 The Moniteur, no doubt for the information of the French 
electors, gives the following account of the manner in which 
electioneering matters are managed in England :— 1 When a dis¬ 
solution of Parliament takes place in England there is always an 
electoral centre of action organized, which is composed of members 
of the Cabinet, whippers-in of the House of Commons, and of the 
principal electoral agents of the party in office, to point out can¬ 
didates to the electors, to assist those who have need of pecuniary 
aid, to maintain a correspondence with the electoral districts, to take 
advantage of the faults and errors of the Opposition—in a word, to 
direct the elections in the sense of the Government. The candidates 
thus chosen and recommended to the country are always regarded as 
the candidates of the Government, and all the influence, authority, 
and action of the State are employed to secure their success. After 
the elections it becomes the duty of that sort of committee to support 
the Government candidates in the House when the validity of the 
return is contested. As to the accusations against the influence 
exercised by the Government, it is a theme which the Opposition 
never fail to bring forward, in order to account for their defeat; but 
the proceeding is so well known that public opinion is not disposed 
to be excited except in extraordinary cases. During the sitting of 
Parliament the whipper-in preserves the function of looking after 
all the vacancies which may occur, and of preparing the candidates 
long previous to the election, and of taking every advantage over the 
Opposition candidate. For this purpose there has been a Parlia¬ 
mentary agency established in Parliament-street, Westminster, 
where a Parliamentary agent sits, who is officially recognized by the 
Government. This agent treats confidentially the delicate and dif¬ 
ficult arrangements of all these kind of affairs. This is a system 
accepted without any complaint by all persons in England, although 
there is a certain reserve observed in giving it publicity. The 
English, however, would be much astonished if it were pretended 
that the Government ought not to interfere actively in elections. 
How, in fact they would ask, could the Parliamentary system per- 

h 2 


116 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


form its functions without that ? On the contrary, the Liberal party 
particularly complain that the electoral action of the present Ministry 
has not been carried as far as it is legal to do, and as its interests 
require; and as a general election is shortly expected, a movement 
is commenced, even at this moment, to give greater activity to 
Ministerial intervention.’ ” 

‘ 1 If you would desire (in England) to draw the whole pack together 
in one full-toned cry, the most certain course would be to show that 
any one of the Ministers had used the influence of his office, or, still 
worse, the name of the sovereign, to turn the elections. This would 
be the crime of crimes; this would be the offence which no partisan 
would dare to defend, and which the public would not pardon. 
They manage these things differently in France.” 

“ Imagine a general election in England of which there is no 
public evidence except a letter from Lord Palmerston to the con¬ 
stituencies published in the Gazette.” 

“ This mockery of election, decorated with the democratic symbols 
of universal suffrage and the ballot, but now so openly confessed to 
be ‘a swindle,’ is ridiculous to other than English eyes. Even in 
Prance it stands confessed a sham. M. de Persigny himself admits 
that it is a sham. He says it would not do in France to adhere 
to the forms of an English election. A French election cannot be 
based upon a contest of parties. An absolute free election in France 
would, according to the Minister of the Interior, be not a civil con¬ 
test, but a civil war.” 

“He declares that he belongs to the Opposition, ‘because the 
existing system of government is far from giving to France all the 
liberties to which she has a right; because the practice of universal 
suffrage, which is the foundation of their liberties, is imperilled by 
the abuse of influence which tends to stifle the voice of the country; 
and because a dangerous and highly insufficiently controlled pro¬ 
digality has been introduced into the public finances.’ ”— A Liberal 
Candidate. 

“He never will admit that, either for dynastic interests or admi¬ 
nistrative interests, Frenchmen should be less free than their neigh¬ 
bours, their allies, or their adversaries—than the Swiss, the Bel¬ 
gians, the English, or the Austrians. Equal or superior to any in the 
battlefield, why should they be inferior to them in civil life?”— lb. 
“The adherents of the ancient political parties are now re-esta- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


117 


blislied in their familiar character, and are recognised as the enemies 
of Imperialism and France. They are not at all of the right pattern 
for well-disposed Prefects to recommend to constituencies. They are 
disturbers of the public peace, vain dreamers of an impossible, wild, 
confused dream, restless spirits sighing for a return of civil strife 
and anarchy. Short work is to be made of such people. They are, 
if possible, to be deterred from offering themselves, and if they do 
offer themselves they are to be immediately put down. The right 
men are to be returned, and only the right men, and the right men 
are those who go exactly as the Government wishes, and in the way 
it wishes .”—Saturday Revieiv. 

In any contest for the appointment of French legislators, the 
greatest amount of popularity, confidence, and respect would, in 
almost every case, be found in the Opposition scale; but is sure to 
be counterbalanced by the domineering dictation of the slavish and 
selfish Prefects, who cast the sword of the Imperial Brennus into the 
other, and by whom each candidate is confronted and catechised, 
and each elector either bribed or bullied. An independent and 
intrepid orator, who should dare to exclaim, in reference to the 
despot of December,— 

Les changemens d’etat, que fait l’ordre celeste, 

Ne coutent point de sang, n’ont rien qui soit funeste. 

Corneille. 

Et tout ce que la gloire a de vrais partisans, 

Le hait trop puissamment, pour aimer ses presens.— lb. 

would be driven from the field to make way for the time-serving 
trimmer, who could say to the wily and well-paid stage-manager,— 

Je suis pour l’Empereur, et je veux qu’on le croie, 

Je regois son argent avec beaucoup de joie, 

J’admire ce qu’il dit, j’estime ce qu’il est, 

Et je tombe d’accord de tout ce qu’il vous plait.— Moliere. 

or whose language would be, in addressing the Man of December 
himself,— 

Yotre France a genoux vous parle par ma bouche, 

Considerez le prix que avez vous coute ; 

Non pas qu’elle vous croie avoir trop achete, 

Des maux qu’elle a soueferts elle est trop bien payee. 

Corneille. 


118 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


Such a politician would be ju^t a man after Morny’s heart. 
“ Approche, que je t’embrasse pour ce mot. Yoila la plus belle sen¬ 
tence que j’aie entendu de ma vie. Souviens-toi de m’ecrire ces 
mots. Je les veux faire grayer en lettres d’or sur la cheminee de ma 
salle.”— Moliere. 

A renegade from the Royalist or the Republican camp would be 
still more subtle and servile. A Grammont or a Billault, if feasted 
at Compiegne, on the day of desertion from the old principles and 
devotedness to the new, might say, like Illo in Wallenstein , when 
embracing his Imperial master, and drinking his health in an over¬ 
flowing bumper:— 

Napoleon! das bring ich der ! Ersauft 
Sey aller Groll in diesem Bundes trunk ! 

Weiss wohl du hast rnich mie geliebt; Gott straf mich, 

End ich dich auch nicht! Lass vergangenes 
Yergessen seyn Ich schatze dich unendlich. 

(7/m zu wiederholten malen Kiissend. ) 

Ich bin dein bester Freund, und, dass ihrs wisst! 

Wer mir ihn eine falsche Katze schilt, 

Der hats mit mir zu thun ! 

* * * ' * * 

Es sind lauter gute Freunae. 

{Sich nich vergungtem Gesicht im ganzen Kreise her um sehend.) 

Es ist kein Schelm hier unter ims, das freut mich. 

* * * He * 

Spitzbuben selbst, die uns zu Schclmen machen! 

Wer nicht zufrieden ist der sag’s. Da bin ich ! 

Schiller. 

Man of December. 

Puis que chacun de vous, dans l’avis qu’il me donne, 

Regarde seulement l’etat, ct ma personne, 

Yotrc amour en tous deux fait ce combat d’esprit, 

JEt vous allez tous deux en reqevoir le prix. 

Corneille. 

“ The electors, who vote by universal suffrage under a despotism, 
have, in the vast majority of instances, no opinions at all, and are 
quite happy to vote as they are bidden. If a despotism based on the 
support of the soldiers and the peasants is to deck itself out with a 
few constitutional trappings, and laws are to be voted and not 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BON APATITES ? 


119 


decreed, some such, theory of electoral duties and of the position of a 
representative must prevail. The Empire is altogether out of keeping 
with the real establishment of political freedom, and it is as far off 
from political freedom now as it was ten years ago. It is only 
milder because it is stronger; and it tolerates a little occasional 
outburst of barren discussion because it has found practically that 
discussion leads to nothing.”— Saturday Review . 

“ ‘ Formed of the remains (or rubbish, debr is) of fallen Governments, 
and though weakened each day by time, which alone can make them 
disappear, they aim at penetrating the heart of our institutions only 
to vitiate the principle of them; and they invoke the name of Liberty 
only to turn it against the State. In presence of a coalition of hos¬ 
tilities, of rancour, and of spite opposed to the great deeds of the 
Empire, your duty, M. le Prefet, is naturally traced, ’ &c. . . . ‘ The 
suffrage is free ; but, in order that the good faith of the popula¬ 
tions may not be deluded by cleverness of language or equivocal 
professions of faith, designate loudly, as in the preceding elections, 
the candidates who inspire the Government with most confidence. 
Let the populations know who are the friends or the adversaries, 
more or less disguised, of the Empire, and let them decide in full 
liberty, but with conrplete knowledge of the state of the case.’ ” 
Bonapartist Paper. 

“Before voting, they may ask questions, and see how aptly the 
ministers answer them; and they may listen to a little dangerous 
eloquence from wrongheaded men who do not harmonize with the 
Grovernment, if any such entered the Chamber. But their own spe¬ 
cial duty is to be satisfied. To get this system in proper working- 
order it is obviously indispensable, that the right men should be 
chosen. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“ It is the prevalence of minds all cut after the feeble, monotonous 
pattern, suited to and fostered by despotism, that makes despotisms 
endure.”— lb. 

11 If the Empire were to flourish for fifty years longer, the literature 
of France might die out as entirely as the literature of Borne did 
under the successors of the Ccesars.”— lb. 

“I must, therefore, appeal to your devotedness. I ask you, in the 
name of the Emperor, to present yourself in your district as a can¬ 
didate of the Government against M. Keller. Your capacity, your 
talent, your acquirements may be usefully employed in the service of 


120 OUGHT FRANCE TO -WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 

the State and of your fellow-citizens. / The confidence you grant the 
Emperor’s Government will give you the means of usefully serving 
your fine country of Alsace.”— Persigny. 

“A staunch supporter of Government showed, that there were 
occasions when he chose to exercise his own judgment. But an 
offence of the kind is unpardonable. In his canvass for the coming 
elections, he assuredly will not have the advantage of Monsieur le 
Prefet’s patronage, and a ‘favourite’ will be started against him.”— 
Times. 

“Some journals describe the candidates for the Legislative Body 
put forward by the Opposition as ‘ Independent candidates.’ This 
designation is an electoral manoeuvre, and an insult to those candi¬ 
dates, who enjoy the sympathies of the country (??) and the confi¬ 
dence of the Government. The Administration will repress manoeuvres 
of this hind with severity .”— Moniteur. 

“ Official candidates are beneficial,” exclaimed the zealous Mar¬ 
quis. “The mission of the Chamber is not to oppose, but to agree 
with the Government. What is the use of champing the bit?” 
As if this was not going far enough, the speaker added, “ There is 
not a single member in the House ivho can do without the support of the 
Government to obtain his election. Happy the man who can dispense 
with that support, but I think it indispensable; I therefore wish 
success to the Minister of the Interior in every quarter.” 

‘ ‘ Every Prefect , every Maire , is an electioneering agent. The people 
are told that in voting for an Opposition member they are making 
an attack on the Emperor himself; and each town is made aware, that 
it will be chiefly by the influence of the departmental members that 
Government aid will be given to it for any local improvement.”—- 
Times. 

“ Such is the fate of an attempt to rescue electoral proceedings in 
Prance from what we should consider the most outrageous tyrany. 
It is plain that , among our neighbours , it is loohed upon as the most natural 
thing in the world that there should be an official candidate , supported by 
Government funds and Government influence; in fact, as part of the 
legitimate administration of the Empire.”— lb. 

“ In the debate which has just taken place in the Legislative Body 
the Ministerial nomination of candidates has been discussed with no 
little vehemence, and the result is that, with the exception of a little 
knot of members, the Assembly has fully supported the assertion of the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


121 


Minister, that the Government has a right to interfere in elections, and 
will ahvays exercise it.” — Times. 

“ Every few months the protests of French liberty make them¬ 
selves heard amid the angry denunciation of the Imperialist majority 
in the Chamber, and, we are sorry to believe, the apathy of the 
French people.”— lb. 

“The Chamber, as at present constituted, infinitely prefers being 
returned by G-overnment, which not only makes matters easy, but 
indirectly pays a considerable part of its own candidates’ expenses.’ 

—Ib. 

“ The overflowing gratitude with which the Commission acknow¬ 
ledges the complafsance of the Government in allowing it to meddle 
with items, the most considerable of which amount to about £40,000, 
must be extremely satisfactory to the author of a system, by which 
the shadow of control is made to satisfy a docile Legislature, while 
the substantial power remains, as of old, with the Executive.”— 
Saturday Revieiv. 

“It is true that the Commission, while it utters all the proper 
platitudes about the recompense of victory which the army gives in 
return for the money that it costs, betrays an uneasy feeling of dis¬ 
like to the Mexican expedition.”— lb. 

“In the last elections of 1857, the Government put its whole 
machinery in play against Montalembert, and, to the general regret, 
the official candidate, a person wholly unheard of till then, was 
imposed on the electors.” 

“ Montalembert has certainly a few advantages over many of his 
former friends; he has sought no favour or honour, aspired to no 
post, violated no pledges, accepted no compromise, and when his 
chances of success in the world were equal to those of others, and 
better than those of some, he has kept to his savage independence 
and laborious poverty.”— Times. 

“In a spirit of mischievous sport he continues with pitiless logic 
to expose every party,—not with equal vigour, however, for he 
comes down on his own, or what was once his own—the ultra-Demo- 
cra tic—more heavily than on any other, and he occasionally lays 
bare, with keen scarcasm, the inconsistency, insincerity, impotence, 
and even venality of those who are among the most clamorous 
Liberals.”— lb. 

“ Several journals announce that the representatives of the sub- 


122 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


electoral Committees will shortly assemble, in order to elect a Central 
Committee. The Government reminds the public, that the law forbids 
associations of more than twenty persons meeting without the consent of 
the public authorities, even should those associations be sub-divided into 
sections comprising a less number; and, further, that the j ournals 
would expose themselves to legal penalties if they published the 
resolutions or manifestoes of such associations.”— Moniteur . 

* ‘ Magne certainly holds, or professes to hold, opinions on financial 
subjects as different from those of M. Fould as night from day. 
This, however, as public men go, is not much, and he would have 
continued, with the same composure as his fellow-orator, defending 
measures, political, financial, commercial, and social, which, as inde¬ 
pendent politicians, they would probably have been the first to 
denounce.” 

“Another election preparation on a grand scale is also announced 
to-day. All the Prefects are to present themselves at the Tuileries 
to receive instructions regarding the coming struggle. The members 
who have sat during this session are to be decorated with a com¬ 
memorative medal, a sort of ticket to show good they have been, 
and how little they have interfered with 1 those who are placed in 
authority over them.’ The evening papers are as loud as they dare 
be, and public opinion much more strongly expressed against the 
1 detestable note of the Moniteur ,’ quoted above.” 

“He is of the class of persons that officials have the greatest 
interest in excluding from public life, and we may be certain that 
nothing will be left undone by those in whose hands in placed the 
management of the elections to keep him from the Chamber. He 
shows that in its actual condition voting is impossible , because universal 
suffrage is under the direction of the Government; because the right of 
meeting and discussing its acts does not exist, because the press is 
not free, because of the system of electoral districts, because of the 
centralization of municipalities, because of the obligation to take the 
oath of allegiance, and because 1 universal suffrage is unequal and 
not identical.’ ” 

“Its principal efforts will be directed against what are called the 
‘men of the old parties,’ particularly those who are advocates of a 
real representative system, of men who advocate the control of 
Government by the Chamber, and of the rational freedom for the 
press. Those who are known to the country, and who, from their 


OUGHT FEACNE TO WOESHIP THE BONAPAETES ? 


123 


moderation, their talents, their social position, and their inde¬ 
pendence of official patronage, think they have as fair a claim as 
as other members of the community to the suffrages of the citizens, 
are especially to be combated by all the means at the disposal of the 
Government. The return of half-a-dozen such persons would be 
considered a greater calamity than if a score of Republicans, red or 
blue, were to enter the Chamber. The incident has practically 
proved the clumsiness of the system of double Ministers—a system 
as absurd as the contrivance which, according to the Abbe du Bos, 
was sometimes employed on the Homan stage, when the pronouncing 
and gesticulating parts were divided, and when one actor spoke and 
another performed the gestures and motions corresponding to what 
the first said.” 

“ Fifteen lawyers, members of the Paris bar, with M. Dufaure, 
bdtonnier of the order of advocates, and M. Berryer at their head, 
have published, in the form of a legal opinion on the legality of the 
formation of electoral committees, a protest against that note. They 
affirm, that the formation of committees on the eve of the elections 
has been a matter of constant usage, and is indeed of absolute 
necessity ; and that the more active the intervention of the Govern¬ 
ment is in elections, and the more restrained the action of the press, 
the more indispensable is this sort of understanding between candi¬ 
dates and constituents.” 

France is at this moment enduring the calamities both of despotism 
and of democracy, which are confederated for the purpose of 
playing into each other’s hands, and crushing liberty, genius, and 
patriotism, by excluding from all power and influence all the states¬ 
men that are entitled to public confidence and respect. 

“ It is not without reason that M. de Persigny and his sycophants 
perpetually remind the electors that the Emperor restored universal 
suffrage. At the same moment, and in the consistent prosecution of 
the same policy, he sent the representatives of the people to prison , and 
conferred on himself every executive and legislative power . In the words 
of the proclamations which were telegraphed to every corner of 
France, 1 The Peesident iias closed the Assembly, and eestoeed 
untveesal suffbage.’ ”—Saturday Review. 

“ The Republic, as soon as it began to consolidate itself, deprived 
the lowest classes of the right of voting; and univeesal suffeage 
ONCE MOEE EEVIVED WITH A NAKED MILITAKY DESPOTISM.”— II). 


. 124 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


The Man of December could only establish his debasing and 
disastrous pre-eminence by nullifying the legitimate influence of 
talent, integrity, property, and intelligence, and for this end he 
restored the suffrages to the ignorant, the needy, the venal, and the 
base. It is as if a desperate adventurer, who aspired to the com¬ 
mand of an army, and knew, that all the generals, offlcers, and 
respectable members of the inferior grades were unwilling that he 
should reign over them, extended the right of choice to the entire 
body, so as to leave the men of credit and character to be overruled 
by the worthless and the wicked, whom he could influence by 
cajolery and subornation. 

“ The peasantry of France care nothing for ability, for personal 
dignity, or for individual freedom.”— Saturday Review. 

A great majority of the Government candidates may be compared 
to “Hyperbolus, who was unconcerned at the worst things they 
could say of him, and being regardless of honour, he was also 
insensible of shame. This, though really impudence and folly, is 
by some people called fortitude and a noble daring.”— Plutarch, 
“ AlcibiadesP 

“Those kings, who are patterns of treachery and perfidiousness, 
think that man most capable of serving them who pays the least 
regard to honesty.”— Plutarch . 

“ The multitude of voices is no authority. A thousand voices 
may not, strictly examined, amount to one vote.”— Carlyle. 

“One of the publications most in vogue during the early period 
of the Presidency was the Mur allies Revolutionnaires. It consisted of 
two volumes of about 500 pages each, and was, in fact, a collection 
of the addresses, proclamations, professions of faith, declarations of 
adherence and devotedness to the Provisional Government and to 
the Bepublic, from all who sought for office or wanted seats in the 
Constituent Assembly, though the republicanism of many of them 
had never, till the 24th of February, been even suspected. The 
Murailles Revolutionnaires so pleased the public fancy, that in a com¬ 
paratively short time it ran through fourteen editions. The book is 
now, I believe, extremely rare ; but whoever has the fortune to 
possess a copy might spend an hour or two agreeably in turning over 
its pages. He will find in them much to amuse, and not a little to 
instruct him,—the devotedness to the new order of things expressed 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


125 


by Prince Louis Bonaparte (tbe present Emperor); tbe satisfaction 
of his late uncle, Prince Jerome, at the opportunity then afforded 
him of proclaiming to the world his respect and devotion to the 
Republic and his temporary Government, and his delight that, ‘ the 
time of dynasties had for ever passed away in France.’ There he 
will wonder at the stern democracy of M. Billault, and at the fierce 
and uncompromising republicanism of M. Baroche. This curious 
collection will, doubtless, be found most useful to the future 
historians of the period. M. Baroche made during the recent 
debates in the Legislative Corps, an onslaught on the Provisional 
and Executive Government of 1848, of the latter of which General 
Cavaignac was the head. The attack was a little indiscreet, coming 
from a man who was one of the first to give in his adhesion to that 
Government, and it was delivered with the true hatred of the class 
of converts, to which the President of the Imperial Council of State 
belongs. The men of the Provisional Government committed faults, 
no doubt, but those faults they have expiated. Perhaps their 
greatest crime in the eyes of their assailant is their persistence in 
their opinions, and this persistence has kept them in obscurity, if 
not in exile or honourable poverty. One remarkable advantage 
for M. Baroche, with whom civic virtue is not solely its own reward, 
is, that none of those persons could answer him on the spot, so that, 
like Oliver Proudfute practising on his wooden Soldan in his own 
courtyard, he could hew away with perfect impunity.”— Times. 

‘ 1 The illustrious historian, who taught the people of France that 
glory and conquest form an abundant compensation for political 
servitude .”—'Saturday Review , as to 11. Thiers. 

“Although he has systematically betrayed the cause of freedom 
in his writings, his renown as an orator and politician renders him 
the natural enemy of a Government which is founded on the repres¬ 
sion or negation of personal eminence.”— II. 

11 M. Thiers henceforth remains the representative of a regime which 
France has condemned, and it is therefore the duty of the Govern¬ 
ment to oppose him. What M. Thiers wishes is the re-establishment 
of a regime which has been fatal to France and to himself, displacing 
authority from its natural foundation, casting it forth to be devoured 
by the j)assions of the tribune, replacing the fertile movement of 
action by the barren agitation of words—a regime which during 
eighteen years produced impotence at home and weakness abroad, 


126 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WOKSHIP THE BONAPABTES? 


which both commenced and ended in a riot. Aggrandized France, 
France which has become so prosperous and so glorious, and which, 
since M. Thiers and those who think with him are no longer in 
power, possesses universal suffrage, will not oppose the Government 
which has extricated the country from the abyss into which these 
men had permitted her to fall.”— Bona]?artist Paper. 

“ Every possible impediment is attempted to be thrown in the way 
of the Opposition candidates. M. Thiers’s placards, which had been 
posted in the Hue Iiivoli, one of the most frequented thoroughfares 
in Paris, were ordered to be torn down, on the ground that the 
police regulations forbid the defacing of public monuments.” 

“I know of many Legitimists, who have long hated or feared M. 
Thiers, and who on, the present occasion, meant to have abstained 
altogether from voting, but who are now determined to support him; 
and no small portion of the working and small shopkeeping class, 
who would have voted for his opponent, will now drop their tickets 
in the ballot box for the man whom the Emperor’s indiscreet adviser 
has sought to crush.” 

“ M. Thiers is too honest a man for any one to be able to accuse 
him of taking an oath which he does not intend to keep. What M. 
Thiers, however, desires is the re-establishment of a regime which 
has been fatal to France and to himself—of a regime flattering to the 
vanity of a few, and disastrous for the welfare of all—which removes 
authority from its natural basis to throw it as food for the passions 
of the tribune—which replaces the fruitful movement of action by 
the sterile agitation of harangues—which for eighteen years pro¬ 
duced only impuissance at home and weakness abroad—and which, 
having commenced in street disturbance, continued amid the noise 
of such disturbance, and ended in insurrection. No, Monsieur le 
Prefet, in face of aggrandized France, of that France which has 
never become so prosperous and so glorious as since M. Thiers 
and his party have ceased to be in power; in the bosom of this 
great city, now the most tranquil, the most wealthy, and the most 
beautiful in the universe; no, universal suffrage will not oppose to 
the Government, which has extricated the country from an abyss, 
those who had allowed it to fall there. 


“Accept, &c., 

“ M. De Peesigny. 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


127 


u That the utmost efforts will he made by the Government to defeat 
the ‘ national historian,’ for the unpardonable sin of Orleanism, is 
not doubted.”— Times. 

11 M. Gueroult, too, who passes for a Democrat, held lucrative 
offices under the Orleans Government, but gave up his Orleanist 
opinions, wdien that Government could no longer give places to any¬ 
body.” 

The Opposition competitors, on the other hand, are both odious 
and formidable to a man like Persigny, and they boldly tell him, 
that they entertain the very principles 

Dont on nous fait un crime, 

Et qui n’ont pas l’honneur d’etre dans votre estime. 

Les Femmes Savantes. 

Tell me, wherein have I offended most ? 

Have I affected wealth or honour ? Speak, 

Are my chests filled up with extorted gold ? 

Is my apparel sumptuous to behold ? 

These hands are free from guiltless blood-shedding, 

This breast fram harb’ring foul, deceitful thoughts. 

Shakespeare. 

“ Under Louis Philippe, and even during the Pestoration, political 
power rested in the hands of the ablest men, with the consent of 
constituencies, to which no Minister could openly dictate. 

u Perhaps, after all, there is some foundation for the theory 
that universal suffrage requires regulation from above. If property 
and civilization are to be staked on a cast, there may be an advan¬ 
tage in providing that the dice shall be loaded. It is better that the 
multitude should be deluded than that it should exercise uncontrolled 
dominion. ’ ’—Saturday Revieiv. 

u Although M. Thiers has employed his life and his genius in the 
systematic eulogy of military despotism, he is too considerable a 
personage to be willingly tolerated by the f)otentate whose dynasty 
he has made popular and possible.”— II. 

“ Let the Government candidates be defeated in any considerable 
number of places, and the whole face of Prance will be changed. 
The political discontent which prevails to a great extent, but has 
hitherto been without voice or force, will make itself heard and felt. 
The enemies of Imperialism, shaking off the fear in which they 


128 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONABARTES ? 

have crouched for years, will rise against it, and will combat it as 
furiously as the Liberals did the Restoration, and the Republicans 
Louis Philippe.”— Press. 

“Among the other men of note in the list of independent Liberals 
who are coming forward is M. Gustave de Beaumont. He has 
addressed the electors of the department of the Sarthe. He also, 
like the others, complains of prodigality in the public expenditure, 
of the enormous amount of the Budget, and the debt which the 
country can only arrest by naming independent deputies; and of 
the military enterprises, undertaken at a great cost, and without an 
adequate object.” 

“ M. Ernest Guibourd, Doctor of Laws, and a member of the 
Paris bar, informs the constituency of Chateau Gonteir (Mayenne), 
where he is a candidate, that the annual expenditure of the country 
has increased from 1,443 millions in 1851 to 2,200 millions in 1861, 
showing an increase of 750 millions in ten years, in which the 
interest on the Russian and Italian war loans stands but for 100 
millions; that 74 millions of new taxes had to be laid on last year, 
and that the Budget of 1864 amounts, as just voted, to 44 millions 
more than that of 1363. If elected, he will advocate economy, 
reduction of taxation, and a reduction of the Military Budgets. 
But, he adds, without liberty no control is possible, and liberty he 
will try to obtain by all legal and constitutional means.” 

“ Their ojnnions can only be expressed on condition of their being 
toned down and softened to suit the taste of the Government, and 
speeches can only be reported when everything that is dangerous 
has been carefully culled out of them by Ministerial vigilance, when 
the press dare only copy what the Moniteur permits them to know, 
and dare not support even that for fear of Ministerial displeasure.” 

“ I never attempted to overthrow any Government; I never had a 
hand in any conspiracy, never figured in any adventure, never 
applauded any revolt, and never profited by any revolution. I am 
driven to declare that among the servants and the panegyrists of the 
Empire there are not many who can say as much. The whole of 
what they tell you amounts to this:—You must name deputies 
docile and resolved to do everything the Emperor tells them. If 
this be so, the shortest way is to suppress the Legislative Corps 
altogether; for if it be composed only of salaried approvers it is but 
a costly and useless piece of machinery; its suppression will 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


129 


simplify matters and reduce the amount of the Budget. The 
Emperor will be very weil able to go on alone. He has no need of 
a crowd of advisers all paid to be always of his opinion.”— French 
Liberal Candidate. 

“From whatever cause it may arise, no one can doubt, that the 
returns are absolutely under the dictation of the Government. It is 
openly acknowledged that ‘ the play of English parties ’—that is, 
a fair and even struggle—is not possible, and is not allowed, in 
France. The results, indeed, as far as representation goes, are 
absurd. When the most critical questions of home or foreign 
policy raise no more than five members in oppositition in the 
Chambers; when deputies are returned by majorities of 99 to 1 ; 
no one can believe, and few can really pretend, that the people 
vote as they think. In short, the Government thinks for them. 
All its influence is used to drive them in its own course, and all the 
elaborate precautions to secure the ballot-box are mere screens to 
this influence.” 

“ Two Parliaments have successively met, and have filled up a 
space of twelve years. During that period the public burdens have 
been incessantly increasing, new taxes imposed, vast expenses 
incurred, the deficit on each year accumulated; in spite of the most 
solemn promises, in spite of the increase of the revenue; the income 
is still inferior to the expenditure, and both the funded and floating 
debts have swelled to enormous proportions.”— Odillon-Barrot. 

u He has frequently condemned the insane exaggeration in the 
public expenditure, which in the course of ten years has increased 
the Budget 50 per cent, and doubled the national debt, the im¬ 
moderate growth of unproductive expenditure, and, above all, the 
excessive military force, which drives the country into distant and 
ruinous expeditions without any necessity. He has more than once 
shown that, owing to the faulty management of the savings of the 
people, France is the country of western Europe which has fewest 
railroads, and that Belgium, for instance, which enjoys the benefits 
of a free government, has, in proportion to her surface, three times 
more railroads. Twelve chief towns of departments are still await¬ 
ing, in France, their railways, while the meanest towns in England 
and Germany have had them long since .”—Liberal Candidate. 

“ The mass of the electors have so little confidence, justly or 
unjustly, in the Government agents that they do not like to leave 

i 


130 OUGHT FRAHCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

tlieir voting tickets in the ballot-box during the night, in spite of 
the precautions taken against fraud.” 

“If the general returns show any considerable addition to the 
minority in the Legislative Body it will be wonderful when one 
considers the efforts made to drive all the independent candidates 
from the field. They have been posted by the Minister on the walls 
of Paris and in the important towns of France as conspirators 
against the Empire, and they whom respect for an oath has kept in 
retirement until now, and who only quit it on the invitation of the 
same Minister, have been held forth as hypocrites, determined to 
violate their engagements the moment they set their foot in the 
Chamber; and the semi-official press, directed by persons who have 
repeatedly changed sides, follows up the discreditable work, and 
day after day heaps insult on persons before whom, should they 
ever come to hold office under the Empire, the revilers would be 
down in the dust.” 

‘ ‘ Several of the Paris papers disapprove as strongly as they 
venture to do the note in the Moniteur threatening with prosecution 
any paper that publishes the operations of electoral committees, as 
well as the committees themselves. The Echo du Nord has received, 
by way of sample, an avertissement for an article on the elections, 
which, 1 by attacking the authority and sincerity of universal 
suffrage, tries to excite hatred and contempt against the Govern¬ 
ment.’ ” 

“The measures taken to insure success to the manoeuvres of the 
general-election agent of the Government, M. de Persigny, and of 
his subordinates, the Prefects, have completely drowned the voices 
of all the intelligent classes in the country. Thus can despotism be 
safely planted upon a universal suffrage foundation—thus can ‘ the 
glorious Empire ’ of France silence all that is worthy of respect and 
homage in literature, science, and politics—in order seemingly to 
enthrone the wants of the masses .”—Saturday Review. 

“ The unfortunante competitor had everything against him, and 
nothing for him, in the rural districts. In many instances he had a 
hundred communes all previously arranged so as to be at the greatest 
distance from him to canvass; not a journal to aid him; no meeting 
of supporters beyond twenty persons possible in a few larger locali¬ 
ties, impossible in others where nobody dared to take the lead. In all 
these communes he had to encounter the agents of the authorities 



OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


131 


by squads, all more zealous, that is, more unscrupulous, than even 
their employers; and, in the chief town of the department, the Pre¬ 
fect issuing his edicts to the meanest of the electors, and to the 
remotest hamlets, and waiting for the last moment before the contest 
—if, in such conditions, it could be called a contest—to heap vitu¬ 
peration on the head of the opposing candidate, when it was impos¬ 
sible for him to defend himself.” 

“ M. Freslon has addressed a second circular to the electors of the 
Maine-et-Loire. The finances again occupy a considerable part of 
this address. He again urges the fact of the Budgets having 
swelled from 1,450 millions to more than 2,000 millions, and asks 
why fresh imposts are laid on if the revenue has augmented by 300 
millions; and why the war decime should be kept on in time of 
peace.” 

“The Home Minister issued his general election circular to the 
Prefects of France, who are warned against the artful manoeuvres of 
the opponents of the present regime —against their intrigues, sur¬ 
prises, and frauds. They are directed to indicate by name the can¬ 
didates approved of by the Administration, and to support with 
all their influence and power the cause of order—in other words, to 
insure by every possible means the return of the Government 
nominees. Not only, however, are the names of those devoted men 
whom the authorities are enjoined to carry successfully through their 
re-election indicated, but the names of those who are not to be re¬ 
elected are also published. And so independent is the cause of 
universal suffrage in France, so incapable of being subjected to force 
or corrupted by the State, that it is already regarded as a certainty 
that the dictates of M. de Persigny to his Prefects will be as 
infallibly accomplished as if all the elections were actually decided 
in the Emperor’s Council.” 

“‘We must stop the progress of our public expenses,—effect 
savings on a Budget which exceeds two milliards. I further desire 
individual liberty,—liberty of the press,—municipal liberty,—liberty 
of conscience,—liberty of instruction.’ Is there individual liberty, 
with exceptional laws, such as the law on general security ? Is 
there individual liberty while there is a possibility of preventive 
imprisonment in all cases of imputed crime ? Is there liberty of 
the press while the papers are subject to warnings, suspension, and 
suppression, and while booksellers cannot sell without previous 

i 2 


132 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


authorisation ? Is there municipal liberty while the commune and 
the department are not emancipated ? Is there liberty of conscience 
while religious worship is impeded in its exercise or oppressed in its 
hierarchy? Is there liberty of instruction under a regime which 
places the reading of a public lecture and the erection of establish¬ 
ments of instruction at the will of the authorities ? ’ ’ 

11 A circular from Count Persigny to the Prefects shows that the 
Imperial Government is becoming alarmed at the number and bold¬ 
ness of the Opposition candidates for seats in the Legislative 
Chamber of Deputies. 

“ These election addresses, though written and read on the other 
side of the Channel, are something more than waste paper. They 
express actual wants. They describe a political condition which is 
as undeniable as it is dangerous. They find readers. They fan a 
flame, and make quiet men commit themselves.” 

‘ ‘ It was quite insupportable to the electors to have the Minister 
of the Interior, and all the Prefects, and all the Mayors, and all 
the police setting up a chorus of loyal directions about the way in 
which every Frenchman who loved his country was to vote. To 
have the Constitutional actually thrust for nothing under their door¬ 
steps, crammed surreptitiously into their pockets, and flung into 
their fiacres in the Bois de Boulogne, was nauseous and insulting. 
So perpetual a fuss about the Emperor’s virtues excited the most 
sacred instincts of the French nature.”— London Review . 

The following extracts demonstrate to what an extent the Imperial 
minions and Ministers carried their system of menace, malice, and 
misrepresentations, with a view of cajoling or coercing the 
electors:— 

“ At the doors of the voting places at Besancon, police agents in 
uniform were openly distributing voting tickets for the official candi¬ 
dates, and in several communes of the same district, anonymous 
placards in manuscript were posted on the walls. One of them was 
as follows:—‘ Electors,—By voting for M. de Montalembert jxm 
vote for the ignorance of your children, for the old regime with all its 
abuses, for war in Italy, for salt at five sous the pound, for cheese at 
thirty francs the hundred, and, finally, for the enemy of the Govern¬ 
ment.’ After this came a pompous eulogy on the official candidate, 
M. Cornegliano, who fills the important post of honorary chamberlain 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


133 


to the Emperor. With all this, M. de Montalemhert and his 
brother-in-law, M. de Merode, had between them 20,000 votes.” 

“To cheat the majority of the people into the belief that they 
were freely expressing their individual sentiments, while in reality 
they were blindly obeying the merest dictation, to keep up the 
semblance of popular municipalities, while every influential post was 
filled by a zealous partizan, to gently fan the flame of opposition, 
and then stifle it with the cold blanket of official interference, has 
been the existent and hitherto successful aim of the Imperial 
regime .” 

‘ ‘ The Imperialists are very uneasy about it, for when once those 
excitable, impetuous, unreflecting French people begin to move, 
there is no saying where they will go. The adversaries of Im¬ 
perialism, on their part, are in ecstacy. France, they say, is not 
dead ,* the glorious old time when Frenchmen were absorbed in 
political affairs is returning.” 

“ In conclusion, the bishops add that in ordinary times to vote is 
a right, but on the present occasion it is a duty. Great interests are 
at stake in the coming elections. The next Assembly will perhaps 
have in its hands, as far as such things can be in the hands of men, 
the honour of France, the independence of the Church, the peace 
of Europe, the cause of liberty in France, and the cause of Papacy 
throughout the world. For these reasons all parties call upon the 
electors to vote.” 

“ The working classes and the small traders, but particularly the 
former, are extremely suspicious. They generally prefer voting on 
the second day for various reasons. The principal one is that they 
apprehend foul play during the night, and object to exposing their 
tickets to be tampered with or abstracted, though this is not so easy 
an operation in Paris as it is in the departments. In the meantime 
the most desperate efforts are made to throw discredit on the Oppo¬ 
sition candidates and defeat them. It is against M. Thiers especially 
that official hostility is directed, and one would suppose that the 
fate of France dejiended on his exclusion.” 

“ Monsieur le Prefet,—For the first time since the establishment 
of the Empire, the parties hostile to the institutions which France 
has given herself dare to attack them in the face of universal 
suffrage. Men of 1815, of 1830, and of 1848 coalesced in a common 
effort, endeavoured on several points to surprise the good faith of 


134 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

the country, in order to turn against the Emperor the very liberties 
which he has recently given, and all, as if obeying a common watch¬ 
word, have resource to the same manoeuvre.’ 7 — Persigny. 

“ M, de Persigny seems utterly wanting in the slightest tolerance 
for opinions one hair’s breadth removed from his own* and has 
somehow persuaded himself that the country can be made happy 
and prosperous by the labours of an assembly from which all parties 
except one have been carefully eliminated.” 

“He accuses certain parties of ‘corrupting the best systems by 
introducing the poison of ancient influences.’ ” 

‘ ‘ Electors who have a memory, and who consequently remember 
the abyss from which the Empire and the Emperor have saved 
France, proceed to the vote, consulting only your hearts and your 
reason.” 

‘ ‘ Placed face to face with declared enemies, the task of the 
Government will be free from all the obstacles which impeded its 
action, and the genius of the Empire will be strengthened in propor¬ 
tion to what the spirit of intrigue will have lost.” 

“ By a strong and popular Government, from the abyss into which 
a parliamentary system of Government had plunged her, France 
has recovered in a few years all that such a system had endangered, 
—her rank, her prosperity, and her wealth. She will not allow 
these real blessings to escape her; nor will she exhaust herself ever 
again by vain efforts in pursuit of phantoms.” 

‘ ‘ However honourable be the representative and the personal 
qualities of M. de Montalembert, we see in him under present cir¬ 
cumstances the politician, and a politician who is the radical enemy 
of Imperial institutions and of the Emperor himself; and that you 
may hold for certain, in spite of all the denials which may be given 
for present electoral purposes, Now it is precisely our rural popula¬ 
tions, the populations that are administered by us, who have made 
the Empire; and, assuredly, they will not now disturb or imperil it. 
Yet they would imperil it if for personal or political reasons of any 
kind they vote for M. de Montalembert.” 

The results of the recent elections have been equally surprising 
and significant. Notwithstanding its immense and ill-gotten 
power, exercised in a manner the most unscrupulous and unsparing, 
Imperialism has experienced such an amount of defeat and disgrace 


bUGIXT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 135 

was neither expected by its adherents* nor hoped for by its anta¬ 
gonists. 

‘ ‘ What are we to think of the enormous fabric which, after the 
labours of ten years and a vast cost of treasure and blood, is ready 
to crumble to dust, and fall like a card-castle at the summons of a 
dozen good talkers and writers ? If it were not necessaTy, then the 
Emperor has committed a grave error in allowing so much to be 
staked on so small a game, and in provoking a contest, where even 
Victory would have been discreditable, much more defeat.”— Times. 

‘‘ As the Minister of the Interior, the Prefect of Police, and the 
journals under their control, declared, that these men were the 
implacable enemies of the Imperial (government, one is tempted to 
ask what they think of the electors who named them? If that 
description of M. Thiers and his eight colleagues be correct, then it 
is a very grave matter, indeed, when we find 235,250 of the Parisian 
constituency identifying themselves with them. Nothing could have 
been more indiscreet than thus placing the Imperial dynasty directly 
at issue with universal suffrage, and throwing the whole weight 
of the existing institutions into the scale against these candidates. 
Paris has, in saucy wantonness or in well-hidden thoughtfulness, 
suddenly turned upon her lord and master, and has inflicted upon 
him the most emphatic slap in the face, which confident man ever 
received from a capricious mistress. Too certain of the answer, he 
has asked her a presumptuous question, and he has got his reply. 
Paris* with all the forms of electoral legality, and with all the energy 
of universal suffrage, has protested against the Empire.” 

“Squares, palaces, theatres, railroads without number—in every 
part riches, luxury, prosperity, pleasure, and splendour—have made 
Paris the marvel of capitals ; and yet all do not suffice to satisfy its 
population. The highest pride of the Parisians consists of that 
noble independence of heart which is called ingratitude.”—* 
Bonapartist Paper. 

“ Paris has suddenly seized an opportunity, and, speaking by 
universal suffrage, has protested against the Empire. This is 
not a simple defeat. It looks more like a formal repeal of the 
great vote of the seven millions. Paris, although unanimous in 
nothing else, is unanimous in rejecting every Imperialist candi¬ 
date.” 

“We cannot understand how the functionaries, who have now for 


136 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


fourteen years been in the closest contact with the people of Paris* 
and employed in their conquest or their government, should so com¬ 
pletely have lost the true measure of the men they deal with.” 

‘ ‘ The population of Grenoble were surprised to see a placard 
posted up in all the communes of the district, announcing, that pro¬ 
ceedings were taken by the law officers against the manager of the 
Impartial Dauphinois newspaper for having published a letter from 
the Opposition candidate, M. Casimir Perier, which was temperate 
in tone and style, but which was described as ‘ defamatory and out¬ 
rageous on the Government.’ ” 

• “ The Parisians do not even thank him for Paris. He has given 
them what they never asked for, and what they accept with unthank¬ 
ful admiration. They asked for political life, and he has given them 
the sculptured image. So, now when the time is come to receive a 
million acknowledgments, his candidates received but 82,607 out of 
235,250 votes given last Sunday and Monday, or little more than a 
third. This is the old proverbial ingratitude ever rendered to 
benefactors—to the imperious obtruders of benefits conceived after 
their own model.” 

“ The Emperor will see now, that a high-spirited city like Paris is 
not to be overridden by a rather domineering and anxious Impe¬ 
rialist such as M. Persigny has shown himself.” — Saturday 

Review. 

“ Paris is the Paris it ever was, and ever will be.. It feels a 
violent reaction from something to something—perhaps it does not 
quite know its own feelings, but it expresses them in the return of 
the men, who, it has just been told, are most hateful to the Emperor’s 
servants and advisers.” 

“ An Opposition candidate has just been returned for the sixth 
district of Paris—in which, it will be remembered, the first election 
was indecisive. Thus there is not a single break in the record of 
Government defeat in all the divisions of the capital. The success¬ 
ful candidate is M. Guerroult, editor of the Opinion Rationale , who 
obtained 17,695 votes, his opponent polling only 10,016.” 

“ IIow are we to regard so portentous an event as the popular 
triumph of names regarded by the Government with execration and 
horror ? The bare announcement of their standing as candidates 
has driven the Cabinet absolutely beside itself; for nothing but the 
supposition of an absolute frenzy, approaching to despair, will 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


137 


excuse the extravagant lengths of the ministerial interference with 
the freedom of election. ” 

“ Regard it from what point of view we may, this is a very serious 
defeat; and the Emperor must feel some bitterness in the reflection, 
that all its worst features have been called forth by the undisguised 
partisanship of the Government, and by the folly and insolence of 
the Imperial Minister.” 

“The tone of the addresses before us betrays the fact, that 
there prevails wide-spread distress and discontent, which admits 
of no relief, and is losing even hope. It naturally looks to 
that Government which has undertaken everything, and has kindly 
deprived men of their liberty, in order to do for them better than 
they can do for themselves.” 

“The election of M. Thiers is a great political event, not merely 
because the whole influence of this powerful Government was 
brought to bear against him; not only because the Minister of the 
Interior thought proper to select him in particular to preach a cru¬ 
sade against, backed as he was by the journalists at his command, 
who did their utmost to crush him ; but also because his opponent 
was a man in every respect fit to represent the district to which he 
belongs.” 

‘ 1 It was unmistakable at the elections, that all those in France, 
who are capable of reflecting on political subjects, are bent on a 
diminution of public expenditure, and on avoiding for the future the 
squandering of French life and money in distant purposeless expedi¬ 
tions. It was not only the success of the Opposition candidates that 
showed this, nor the confidence with which they appealed on these 
two points to the convictions of their countrymen .”—Saturday Review. 

“M. Jules Simon, who obtained double the number of votes 
given to the official candidate, was dismissed from his Professor¬ 
ship at the Sorbonne for declining to take the oaths to the Empire. 
He is a Republican, but a moderate politician, and an able and 
honest man.” 

“ Of course the majority of the real people of France—by which I 
mean the men of property and intelligence—hold, and always have 
held, Imperialism in horror; but they have endured it as the only 
preservative against what would be the destruction of society—a Red 
Social Republic. M. Thiers will naturally take the lead of the 
Opposition; and he and they will have the fact to demonstrate, that 



188 O tJGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

it is possible for France to escape from tbe thraldom of Imperialism 
without falling into Kepublicanism; they will show her that her 
honour requires, and her salvation consists in, a return to constitu¬ 
tional monarchy. Once that demonstration made, the impetuous 
French, we may be sure, will not be long in acting upon it.” 

“Limoges counts 10,694 registered electors, of whom 7,014 voted ; 
and of these 4,803 declared for M. Theodore Bac, the Opposition 
candidate, while only 2,129 voted for the official.”— Times . 

“ In the first electoral district of the Ardennes, the Opposition 
candidate got 9,166 votes. The town of Sedan gave him 1,396* 
while it accorded only 765 to his competitor. 

“In the Landes the official candidate polled 19,264, while the 
Opposition could show a respectable minority of 13,352; and, 
moreover, like many others on the same side, had a considerable 
majority in the towns. Mont de Massan, the chief town of the 
department, gave him 620 votes to 312 for the official; Saint Sever 
714 to 525; and Aire 585 to 216. Facts like these must convince 
the Emperor, that the repressive system is most distasteful to the 
better educated and more'intelligent portion of the population.” 

“Among the official candidates there are about 22 whose elections 
are vitiated for not having taken the oaths previous to nomination, 
owing to the Prefects having forgotten, or thinking it unnecessary, 
to administer it to men whose only recommendation was their official 
character. It is remarked too as very significant, that several of the 
losing candidates have been beaten only by small majorities.” 

“ The Minister would listen to no argument; his last words were, 

4 Crush M. Andelarre.’ The result proved that the Prefect was 
right. M. Andelarre triumphed over all that the Prefect could do; 
he was returned by a large majority, and because he was returned, 
the Prefect was at once dismissed.”— Times . 

“ Among the towns as distinct from the districts, I would mention 
Alais andNismes, where the Government had only 1,497 to 3,184 
for the Opposition candidate; at Abbeville, 1,531 to 2,835 ; at MuL 
house the official candidate had 2,050 to 7,793. At Libourn the 
Opposition had 2,289 to 320; at St. Etienne, 3,700 to 785. At 
Avignon both candidates had an equal number of votes; but at 
Carpentras, in the same district, the Opposition had a majority of 
over 600. At Marseilles and Aix, M. Thiers had 6,000 votes against 
4,575. In the three cantons of the town of Brest the Opposition 


OtfGlIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? i 39 

obtained 4,936 to 506, while the official candidate, who owed his 
return to the peasants, obtained but 1,341 votes. At Grasse the 
Opposition candidate had 2,130 to 367; at Agen 1,878 to 1,350. 
Grenoble gave 2,000 votes to M. Casimer Perier over his official 
opponent; and at Metz the Opposition polled 4,500 votes to 2,400 
given to the Government nominee. 

“ With the figures before us it is evident, that the success of the 
Opposition would have been much greater, had not the votes of the 
peasantry outweighed the more enlightened populations of the 
towns.” 

“The result of the election was announced with the usual for¬ 
malities at Grenoble on Thursday, when the attendance was very 
numerous. After the name of the successful and official candidate, 
M. Boyer, was proclaimed, M. Casimir Perier rose, and, amid deep 
silence, read a protest against the conduct of the authorities during 
the elections. The protest was received with deafening applause by 
all present; and, on returning to his hotel, M. Casimir Perier was 
followed by the crowd to the doors, where they separated, shouting 
1 vive Casimir Perier ! ’ 

“ I forgot to mention that the proclamation of the result of the 
Paris elections at the Hotel de Yille on Thursday was also received 
with three rounds of applause from the bystanders.” 

“ France, wearied with a monotony, which is not interrupted by 
even a speech or a paragraph without the official visa , desires to see 
politics once more a question. There is now a fair prospect of her 
being set at liberty to do right meritoriously, or wrong if she 
prefers.” 

Montalembert and Dufaure’s sentiments have, no doubt, been 
adopted by a great majority both of the candidates and of the sup¬ 
porters of anti-imperialism. 

“ He believes liberty to be banished by a system which, though it 
be not exclusively the system of the present Government, borrows 
alike from the old regime and from the Bevolution their worst tradi¬ 
tions, and crushes in public as in local life all initiation, and all 
vitality that is independent of the State.”— Montalembert . 

“You who think, that the finances of the country are carefully 
husbanded ; that distant expeditions are undertaken and conducted 
with irreproachable prudence; that, moreover, the Parliament and 


140 OUGHT FRANCE TO- WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

the press have full liberty to criticise and control,—you, I repeat, who 
think so, vote for the candidates whom the Government presents 
to you, after-having exacted from them entire and absolute approval. 
But you who wish, that Parliament should raise its voice to enlighten 
Prance and warn the Government against the faults it may commit; 
you who want a free press to repeat and reinforce the admonitions of 
the Chamber ; you who hold, that the glory of great adventures costs 
more than they are worth, and that finances well regulated are the 
first strength of a country; from you I accept your suffrages, and I 
feel, that I shall again recover my voice, and, above all, that I shall 
not be wanting in devotedness to defend your opinion, which is my 
o wn. ” — Dufaure . 

“ The success of the Opposition list in Paris was forwarded by the 
division produced in the ranks of the friends of the Government by 
the attitude of the journal La France. But in all the Departments 
the Government candidates are triumphant.” 

“ A letter has been published, addressed by the Minister of Public 
Worship to the Archbishops and Bishops who signed the memo¬ 
randum recommending the electors not to abstain from voting. The 
Minister censures this act as being in opposition to the obligations of 
the Episcopate, and as an excess of clerical power against the State. 
The Minister says, in conclusion,—‘ The Government is firmly 
determined henceforth to prohibit the publication in the newspapers 
of any discussions which may have taken place among bishops 
assembled without legal authorisation.’ ” 

‘ ‘ The independent press which supported, so far as it could 
venture to do, the candidates of the Opposition, indulges in no 
insulting boasting. Satisfaction is, no doubt, manifested, but it is 
expressed with modesty and dignity. This becoming attitude con¬ 
trasts favourably with the tone of some of the semi-official journals, 
the most rabid of which, La Nation , not only exhibits its mortifica¬ 
tion, but is indiscreet enough to use language towards the Parisians 
which they may not soon forget or pardon, and even to utter 
threats.” 

“The Republican candidates who have succeeded, have suceeded, 
not because the voters who returned them are all in favour of a 
return to a republican form of government, but because they are dis¬ 
contented with things as they are—the one bond of union has 
been a protest against the Empire.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


141 


On the other hand, there will he in the new Chamber as over¬ 
whelming a preponderance of sycophants, fools, and trimmers, as 
there will be found on the opposite benches of talent, eloquence, 
disinterestedness, and integrity. 

“Nine-tenths of the Chamber will still be composed of deputies 
who would vote black was ivhite if they were bidden , and, therefore, the 
practical course of Government cannot be changed. Nor are the 
large towns at all less securely in the grasp of their master than they 
were. Paris may return an Opposition deputy in every district, but 
Paris is at the mercy of a ruler who has barracks full of soldiers within 
the city , and who has cleared in every direction those open paths for 
cannon-balls, the spectacle of which, because they are lined with 
big white houses and rows of trees, is supposed by M. Persigny to 
awaken so much gratitude and pleasure in the Parisians. Lyons 
and Marseilles are as liable as they were ten years ago to those fatal 
raids which swept off so many innocent and unknown men to the 
horrors of a penal settlement, and hushed the discontented into the 
silence of a gloomy fear. Therefore the reality of power is the 
same, and the deep foundations of the Imperial Government remain 
unshaken..”'— Saturday Review. 

“ The new Legislative Chamber will number among its members 
Count d’Ornano, first master of ceremonies to the Emperor; 
M. Sibuet, assistant master of ceremonies; seven chamberlains, 
namely, MM. d’Arjuzon, Latour-Maubourg, de Tarente, de Cham- 
pagny, de Zorn de Bulau, de la Poize, and Toinet; M. d’Havrin- 
eourt, chamberlain to the Empress ; M. de Pierres, first equerry to 
the Empress; MM. d’Aiguevives and Toulongeon, equerries to the 
Emperor; Dr. Conneau, head physician to the Emperor; M. 
de Dalmas, ex-under-chief of the Emperor’s cabinet; M. de 
Jaucourt, chef du cabinet to M. Persigny; M. Soubeyran, ex-chef 
clu cabinet to M. Eould, Minister of Finance, and now sub-director 
of the Credit Fonder’; M. Haetjens, Marshal Magnan’s son-in- 
law ; MM. de Clary and Murat, the Emperor’s near relations ; 
M. Dolfus, son-in-law of the Prefect of the Seine; and a 
son and a cousin of the Minister of Finance. The votes of these 
gentlemen may be known beforehand.”— Times. 

“It is expected, that, when the Verification des Pouvoirs —that is, 
the examination by the committee of the Legislative Corps as to 
whether the elections have been strictly according to law—takes place, 


142 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


some curious disclosures will be made. Particular attention will be 
paid to the way in which the votes were taken, and how the voting 
tickets were disposed of. Complaints were heard some months back 
of the deficiency of ballot-boxes, and the Government will be peti¬ 
tioned to supply a proper quantity of that indispensable article. In 
some former elections the citizens had to drop their tickets into pots, 
jugs, soup-tureens, the coat pockets of Mayors, and hats, which did 
duty for the regulation urn. The pockets and vases have gone out 
of use, but it appears that the hats maintained their ground. One 
case is mentioned of the Mayor of a commune in Brittany making 
use of the hat he wore the day before to put the voting tickets in. 
He placed it in his clothes press, before which a couple of gendarmes 
stood sentinels, and it was opened by the deputy Mayor for the 
reception of the tickets. This mode of voting, though patriarchal, 
is not, however, the safest, and the new Chamber will be asked to 
give the subject its serious attention. 

“ Hat-voting, however, is but venial compared with the excesses 
which other functionaries are charged with. It is alleged that the 
Mayor of a district in the Tarn-et-Garonne menaced with all the 
rigour of his authority the ticket distributors of M. Vaisse-Cibiel, 
the Opposition candidate, refused to deposit in the ballot-box the 
bulletins with that dangerous name, and sent the electors to get 
more orthodox ones from the Garde Champetre, who handed them 
about in the same room where the operation was going on. 
M. Yaisse-Cibeil intends presenting a petition for a redress of this 
grievance. Another Opposition candidate, M. Triebert, appeals to 
the Tribunals. He publishes a legal opinion, signed by some 
eminent members of the Paris bar, declaring that the printing and 
circulating, free of postage, and under the sanction of the Prefect of 
the Deux-Sevres, of a private letter against him, was a flagrant 
violation of the law. He also complains of an article in the official 
journal, La Revue de V Ouest, published the same time as the letter, 
which stated that if the electors voted for M. Triebert they would 
vote for ‘ the Eevolution of 1848 and the overthrow of the Imperial 
Government; that it would be better to put their tickets in muskets 
rather than in the ballot-box, for a vote for him would be a vote in 
favour of a social war.’ I may add that with all this the candidate 
of the ‘social war’ obtained 7,464 votes, and the official candidate 
a little over 10,000. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


143 


<l M. Adrien Dumont intends protesting against the ‘ irregularities, 
abuse of influence, and authority, to his prejudice,’ which produced 
the return of his competitor in the department of the Drome ; and 
from the Gironde, where the official candidate was returned by a 
majority only of 40, petitions and protests are to come up against 
the conduct of M. Peitri, the Prefect, during the election. In fact, 
petitions and protests are expected to be so many that the Chamber 
will have to provide itself with additional waste-paper baskets.” 

It is surmised, in some influential quarters, that the Man of De¬ 
cember will now adopt a liberal policy, that he will endeavour to 
inveigle and impose upon the nation by reluctant concessions, and 
even that the statesmen who, to my astonishment, have stooped to 
take the oath of fidelity, will follow up this step by entering into his 
service, and bidding adieu to their long-cherished principles and 
aspirations. 

“ It is thought, by persons who pretend to have a deeper insight 
than the generality of the public, that the Emperor seriously 
contemplates introducing before long certain reforms in the ex¬ 
isting institutions, particularly with respect to the liberty of the 
press, liberty of speech, and the responsibility of Ministers.”— 
Times. 

“ The opinion gains ground that the Emperor will follow up the 
Liberal policy indicated in the Decree of November, 1860, rather 
than adopt the restrictive and reactionary measures, which have been 
pressed upon him. The wish may, after all, be only father to the 
thought; but, as the public accepts more readily what strikes them 
as the necessary consequences of the elections, they are willing to 
believe the rumours that a decree, if not a Senatus-consultum, will 
before long authorise the Ministers to come before the Legislative 
Chamber to give an account of their respective departments and 
defend their conduct. This would be virtually a return to Minis¬ 
terial responsibility ; for a Minister, whose measures were censured 
by a vote of the House, could hardly retain his place in the Govern¬ 
ment.”— II. 

“As to M. Thiers and others returned in his company, we shall 
be much disappointed if we do not see them cheerfully acknowledg¬ 
ing constituted authority—willingly admitting the good already done 
by the Emperor, and loyally working with his Government in the 


144 


OTJGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


promotion of tlie peace and prosperity of France” ! ! !— London 

Review. 

I trust, that these eminent and excellent men will not take a 
step so inconsistent and so ignominious. Imperialism already 
menaces them with coercion and chastisement, and, in speaking of 
previous professions of Liberalism on the part of the French ruler, 
it has been justly observed, that “the liberties in question were 
granted on condition of never .being used—like the guinea which 
Mrs. Primrose allowed her daughters to keep in their pockets, but 
with the strictest injunctions, that it should never be changed.” 

“ The new deputies may try to thwart the conduct of public affairs, 
to influence the movements of the Bourse, and to react in a fatal 
manner on trade and industry. They may, too, echo in the Legis¬ 
lative Chamber the hostile language, which is now and then heard 
in foreign Assemblies, trouble the public confidence, disturb credit, 
and 1 bring about situations in which the superior authority will be 
constrained to take in hand, and energetically, the imperilled 
interests.’ ” —French Paper. 

“ Cato charged his son to have no share in the administration ; 

1 For the state of affairs,’ said he, 1 is such, that it is impossible for 
you to fill any office in a manner worthy of Cato, and to do so 
otherwise would be unworthy of yourself.’ ”— Plutarch. 

“With a pen in his hand, and with sufficient time for prepara¬ 
tion, he could imitate very neatly the scrupulous language of a man 
of honour.”— Kinglake , p. 215, as to the Second of December. 

“His overtures to the gentlemen of France were always rejected. 
Every statesman to whom he applied refused to entertain his pro¬ 
posals ; every general whom he urged always said that, for whatever 
he did, he must have ‘ an order from the Minister of War.’ ”— 
Kinglake , p. 224. 

Can they ever forget or forgive the outrageous violence and 
effrontery, by which the elections to the Presidency, and afterwards 
to the Imperial throne, were forced, after the coup d'etat, upon a 
reluctant, terrified, and humiliated nation ?—when, “according to 
the wording of the Plebiscite , a vote given for any candidate other 
than Louis Bonaparte would have been null?”—when “thirty-two 
departments were placed under martial law, and men voted under 
the sword ? ”—when “ even the printing of voting tickets was made 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONATARTES ? 


115 


penal, and every adversary of tlie Ely see was as helpless as a man 
deaf and dumb ? ’ ’—when i 1 long before tlie days fixed for the election, 
to which civilians were invited, the army had been ordered to vote 
(and to vote openly without ballot) within forty-eight hours of the 
receipt of a despatch of the 3rd of December,” in virtue of which 
“ all the land forces of France had voted by be ' of drum,” so that 
“ France, if she were to dare to vote against the President, would 
be placing herself in instant and open conflict with the declared 
will of her own army, and this at a time when, to the extent already 
stated, she was under martial law?” “France succumbed; and 
when they had obtained the “Yes” from herds and flocks of men, 
whom they ventured to number at nearly eight millions, it was made 
known to Paris that the person, who had long been the favourite 
subject of her jests, was now become solo lawgivor for her and 
France. ’ ’— Kinglalce. 

“In 1854, at the age of forty-nine, Lacordaire was constrained to 
retire from public life, in consequence, says M. de Montalembert, of 
having admitted into one of his disquisitions, 1 certain outbursts of 
truth, grief, and offended honesty, which were out of season.’ ”— 
Times. 

And what is the constitution of the degraded Assembly, to which 
many of France’s ablest and most virtuous public men have con¬ 
descended to seek for admission ? 

‘ 1 A despot reigning by universal suffrage will give his Legislature 
just so much power as to keep up the illusion of popular rights, 
without really diminishing his own power.”— Saturday Review. 

“ In France the Executive owes its strength more to tlie material 
force of which it disposes, than to any assistance which it receives 
from the Legislature, and the Legislature is itself little more than a 
Chamber for registering the decrees of the Minister.”— Times. 

“ They are richly rewarded for their services. They hold their 
lucrative seats upon a certain tenure. Their adulation is not a 
matter of courtesy, but of business.”— Saturday Review. 

“ They are of opinion that, if they may have an opinion, they 
entirely coincide beforehand in the opinion of his Imperial 
Majesty.”— lb. 

“Marshal Vaillant now fills as many posts as did the Duke of 
Wellington at one period of his political career. He is the Minister 

K 


V 


146 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 

of the Emperor’s Household, the Minister of Fine Arts, the official 
Director of the Grand Opera, and, till M. Baroche shall return from 
Germany, the Minister of Justice and Religion. The Duke of 
Wellington, exercising the functions of Lord Chancellor and Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, could not have seemed more absurd in 
English eyes than does to those of Frenchmen the last appointment 
of the Marshal. But if the army be really the chief power in the 
State, there is, after all, nothing incongruously ridiculous in seeing 
an old soldier placed at the head of all the priests, painters, ballet- 
dancers, judges, and barristers, as well as the lords, ladies, pages, 
and footmen employed in the Imperial household.”— Times. 

“We cannot get rid of the belief that a little less wealth, a little 
narrower frontier, a little less interference in the affairs of other 
nations, might well be endured for the sake of a free Parliament 
and a free press .”—Saturday Review. 

“ The Times , a little time back, was in ecstacies at the amount of 
freedom enjoyed by the Chamber, and extolled its giver as one of 
the benefactors of mankind. The one little fact was forgotten, that 
what was restored was simply a small part of what had been taken 
away by the same hand.”— lb. 

“The Senate take their stand upon the broad, intelligible, and 
fundamental principle of entire and absolute approval of everything 
that has been done. They are determined, come what may, to 
adhere to accomplished facts. It is impossible for them, they con¬ 
ceive, to go wrong, so long as they are grateful. So they hail with 
gratitude the Emperor’s foreign policy, and they hail with equal 
gratitude all that he has done at home. They are thankful that he 
has been pleased to give his subjects some slight increase of liberty, 
and they are particularly thankful that he has not seen fit to give 
them more.”— 7b. 

“To say that anybody makes a present of liberty to a nation is 
to say that liberty does not belong to it, and that it may again be 
taken back, and experience has taught us, that practice follows 
theory very quickly .”—Morning Star. 

“ The deputy enjoys a purse well filled with public money so long 
as he consents to act the part of mute in an Assembly which has not 
this session assembled two dozen times. Amuse himself out of doors 
and within keep silence, and vote whatever way M. Billault may 
direct him, are the chief functions which he has to fulfil. Occasion- 


ought peakce to wonsnip tiie eonapaetes? 


117 


ally lie is obliged to take unmoved a snub from the Duke de Morny. 
But, as the President of the Chamber of Deputies scatters his 
arrows about in all directions, an aggrieved representative of the 
people may console himself with the reflection, that he is not alone 
in his humiliation.”— Morning Star. 

The object of the Man of December in maintaining Legislative 
Assemblies, is not that they may defend liberty or uphold popular 
rights, but to employ their sanction as a colourable pretext for a 
pernicious system of extravagance and extortion. 


A tirrannia 
Cerehi, non altro. 


sostegno 


Alfieih. 


In difesa dei re scmpro 
(Anco adiandoli) a gara veglium quelli; 

Che da lor traggon lustro, oro, e possanza.— lb. 


“ Cum aulae sumptibus patrum omnium, et preventus regii non 
sufficerent, imponit gravissima populo tributa, usque absimtes, nova 
excogitavit, non ut republicam vel augeret, vel ornaret, vel 
defenderet, sed ut populi non unius opes vel unam in domum, 
congerendas inferret, vel una in domo dissiparet.”— Milton. 

“ Though sacrificed, M. Magne is no loser. As Minister sans 
portefeuille it was his duty to get up all financial and other questions 
on which he was instructed to defend the policy of the Government 
in the Legislative Corps or in the Senate. On his * appointment, the 
Emperor made him a present of a mansion in the Alle d'Antin ; it teas 
furnished at the cost of the State; and he received an annual stipend of 
£4,000 (100,000f.) He is dismissed from his office, but by way of 
consolation he is promoted to the Privy Council, an appointment which 
combines otium and dignity—£4,000 a-year is attached to the easy 
functions of a Privy Councillor , and there is literally no work to he done. 
I have heard it remarked by many persons that if M. Fould took 
offence at the communique, his feelings must not have by any means 
been soothed by the terms of the Emperor’s letter. In fact, whilst 
stating that his ‘ divergency of opinion ’ with M. Eould has induced 
His Majesty to part 1 for a time ’ with M. Magne, the Emperor takes 
care to state, that he (M. Magne) enjoys his utmost confidence. I 
am not in the secrets of M. Fould, and cannot say how lie will take 
this letter. But many friends of his, and in particular his admirers 

k 2 


148 OUGHT FRAHCE TO WORSHIP THE BOHAPARTES ? 

at tlie Bourse, proclaim, tliat the Imperial letter is far worse than 
the communique , and that M. Fould cannot remain in office after the 
deliberate expression of His Majesty’s confidence in his rival. On 
the other hand I am inclined to think, that M. Fould is not the man 
to take offence at imaginary slights.”— John Bull. 

The profuse and profligate expenditure of the last twelve years 
ought to prevent any true patriot from supporting such a dictator, 
and submitting to such a dynasty. 

The Imperial punier perqe would fain get rid of the impediment 
to his extravagance, whicli the introduction of M. Foidd into the 
Cabinet has interposed. A note appeared in the Government papers 
impugning the policy of that able man, and, of course, sanctioned 
by the highest authority. 

“ The above note was drawn up by M. Magne, the now talking 
but late Finance Minister, who has always been jealous of M. Fould, 
who superseded him. It will be obvious to those who remember the 
celebrated letter of M. Fould to the Emperor, that the above note 
clashes with it very strongly. The note says that the finances were 
as well managed before M. Fould came into office as they are now. 
M. Fould, on the contrary, just before he took office, represented 
that everything was going to rack and ruin. M. Magne, before 
sending the above note to the papers, had a conversation with the 
Emperor. M. Fould understands that such a publication behind 
his back is a warning to him, that he no longer possesses His 
Majesty’s confidence. He is determined to persevere in the policy 
of the Senatus consultum, but there is reason to think, that the 
Emperor finds his mo vements hampered by it, and wants a change .” 

“The official communique not only rebukes the Debats and Patrie 
for ‘ going a great deal too far,’ but actually attacks M. Fould’s 
administration, and states, that the supplementary credits last year 
(under his management) amounted to 300 millions, whilst it was 
only 291 millions in 1860, and 352 millions in 1861 before he took 
the finances in hand. There can be no doubt, that the facts are cor¬ 
rectly stated by the communique , but it cannot be very agreeable to 
M. Fould to have it officially stated that, after all his preliminary 
flourish of trumpets, the finances are no better for his superintendence 
than they were when uncontrolled expenditure was the rule. On 
clit, that, in consequence of the publication of this communique , M. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


140 


Fould has placed liis resignation in tlie Emperor’s liands. I cannot 
say, that I believe in tlie on (lit, but there are among the Emperor’s 
advisers many men who would be glad to turn out the Minister of 
Finance. The fall, which has taken place at the Bourse to-day on 
the strength of the report, will show you how the financial world 
■would look upon such a contingency.” 

“ There occurred a terrible panic at the Bourse to-day, originating 
in a report, that M. Eould had retired from the Ministry of Finance. 
The noise and confusion was something deafening and bewildering. 
The Threes fell eventually to 65f., closing at 69f. 5c. I know not 
on what authority the asserted retirement of M. Eould is based. Up 
to yesterday at two o’clock I can state positively that M. Eould had 
no intention of ceasing to serve the Emperor and the country. His 
Excellency is not popular in the Cabinet Conncil; but hitherto lie 
lias carried out his financial policy; and I cannot conceive, after the 
late vote of the Senate, that any question could have arisen to make 
him leave office. The panic to-day shows how much the commercial 
world esteem M. Fould.” 

“The great news of the day is the resignation of M. Eould as 
Minister of Finance. The report is, in this instance, correct, so far 
as the fact of tendering the resignation is concerned. Whether it 
■will be persisted in, or accepted, w r o shall soon know; but it is 
certain, that on being apprized of it, the Emperor neither accepted 
nor refused it. A communicated article from the Elomo Depart¬ 
ment, addressed to the Journal dcs Debats and the Patrie , on the 
finances, and which, by implication, disputes certain statements in 
M. Fould’s speech on the supplementary credits, is the cause alleged 
for the Minister’s determination to throw up his portfolio. The 
news produced something like a panic at the Bourse.” 

“A fall of nearly one per cent, on the Paris Bourse was an¬ 
nounced, and the market closed heavily at a decline of an eighth. 
The resignation of M. Fould, of -which there were reports two or 
three weeks ago, was alleged to be the reason of the downward 
movement in French Bentes, but according to the latest telegrams 
this resignation, although tendered, had been refused acceptance.” 

u M. Fould has been appeased by the disappearance of the most 
obnoxious of his colleagues, and has withdrawn his resignation.” 

“ In France, if there be any man as happy as a Minister entering 
office, it is a Minister just turned out. The same day that sees M. 


150 OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

Magne cease to be Minister sees liim comfortably seated at the Privy 
Council table. The salary is not mentioned, but it is probable that 
it will be the same (100,000f.) which was given under similar cir¬ 
cumstances to M. Walewski, one of the most highly-favoured per¬ 
sonages, when he retired for a short while into private life to make 
way for M. Thouvenel at the Foreign Office. 

“The monthly account published by the Governor of the Bank 
of France on Friday, though not unfavourable, is not considered 
altogether satisfactory in commercial circles.” 

“This contrast demonstrates in a very significant manner that 
the Credit Mobilier derives its enormous profits, not from its functions of 
a joint-stock hank, hut from the traffic of its portfolio—that is to say , 
from the irresistible influence, which its power of monopoly secures for it 
at intervals, by speculations at the Bourse, from the strange facility 
given to it to act arbitrarily on the value of public securities. The 
report is this year as mysterious as in preceding years, as to the 
nature of the Bourse operations from which the profits have been 
derived.” 

“ In examining the Budget of expenses for the year 1864, pre¬ 
sented to the Corps Legislatif, it will be found to amount to 
2,105,665,624f., being an increase of 44,000,000f. as compared with 
the Budget voted last year. The Committee on the Budget have 
made some changes, which reduce it to 2,105,093,124f., leaving an 
excess of expenditure of about 4,000,000f. over the presumed 
revenue. There is one fact, however, which renders these figures 
of comparatively little value—that is, there will, no doubt, be a 
further excess of expenditure under the head of extraordinary 
credits. We have not yet arrived at the end of the first four 
months of the present year, and an increased expenditure of 
107,000,000f'. is already announced.” 

“ French financiers, who used to exclaim against the enormous 
amount of the national debt of Great Britain, may now look at 
home, and they will find that their own national debt is approaching 
that of Great Britain with rapid strides.” 

“ The Parisians seem to have given up guessing about M. Fould’s 
financial plans; but the commercial world seem convinced, that it is 
impossible for him to go on without a loan. Through the efforts to 
inspire confidence, the funds are slowly and painfully going up, and 
nothing will be left undone to raise them to the point at which a 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE DONAPARTES ? 


151 


loan would not be more onerous from tlie Treasury. The Minister 
has still, they say, difficulties to contend with in the Cabinet. The 
Walewski clique is still strong, and the Emperor cannot, or-will not, 
shake it off. M. Fould has done his utmost to have the Ministers 
allowed to defend their own measures in the Chamber of Deputies ; 
but they who hate the light, and have very good reason for doing so, 
opposed this 1 insidious ’ attempt to return to Parliamentary govern¬ 
ment.” 

‘ ‘ A Minister is ready to keep all this huge machinery going, to 
help her out of all her debts, and asks for no other means of doing 
it than a new stamp duty and a tax upon lucifer matches.” 

“ The renunciation of the right to raise money without the partici¬ 
pation or cognizance of the Chambers is an admission of past error, 
and a pledge not to repeat it; but it will not pay off the deficit. 
Something more than repentance, or resolutions of amendment, are 
required to relieve the taxpayers from the consequences of prodi¬ 
gality.” 

“ Deep dissatisfaction is observable among the mercantile classes 
at the prospect of heavy burdens added to those which they have at 
present. Some, indeed, approve the Emperor’s frank avowal of 
his past mistakes, while a good number see in it a confession of 
weakness.” 

9 

“ M. Casimir Perier contends that this report has fully corroborated 
the fears of those, who believed that, in the absence of more sub¬ 
stantial reforms, a notable change in the Imperial policy could alone 
produce any real and salutary influence on the finances.” 

“The evil system he has established of making the State respon¬ 
sible for the price of bread and the sufficiency of work, cannot be 
suppressed at such a crisis without careful gradations. But there 
are things which he may do at once, quickly and efficiently. Ho 
may cease to waste monthly millions upon costly naval experiments 
and upon ships which never can be wanted, except for a war of 
aggression—ships the very production of which calls other hostile 
ships into being to neutralise them. He can also return to the 
industrious and productive classes some 200,000 active mouths and 
idle right hands.” 

“In 1860 and 1861 the extraordinary expenses, which were 200 
millions for one year and 352 for the other, were, indeed, of the 
extra Budget class, for they did not proceed from resources pro- 


162 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


vicled for in the Budget out of regular income. What was the 
result? Those expenses augmented the deficit by 642 millions in 
two years, and have pressed as much on the floating debt. It was 
the fearful prospect before him that made the Emperor uneasy, and 
made him listen to the counsels of M. Fould.” 

“ A nation that never reimburses its debt may go on for a long 
time in this way ; it spends capital, and, while paying only a yearly 
interest, it does not for the moment feel the weight of expenditure. 
Nothing can be more dangerous than such a system, which blinds 
the country to the consequences of extravagance, alters the cha¬ 
racter of its prodigalities, and presents it as a sign of its wealth ; 
and nothing ought to cause more alarm to the friends of liberty, for 
with such a system the Government has the handling of enormous 
sums of money, of which the country demands no account, since it can 
be procured without the public feeling the weight of its engagements.” 

‘‘Accounts from the manufacturing districts of France are not 
favourable. It is said, that trade was never in so depressed a state 
at St. Etienne as it is at present. Serious commercial difficulties 
are spoken of at Kouen and Mulliouse. The Protectionists persist 
in attributing this crisis to the Treaty of Commerce with England ; 
but the truth is, that French manufacturers are suffering from 
the American war. Accounts from the silk-producing departments 
in France are all unfavourable. The price of raw silk still shows 
a tendency to decline. The Budget of the City of Paris next year 
amounts to nearly £8,000,000 sterling.” 

‘ ‘ The commercial and moneyed classes are, of course, unanimous 
in condemning the policy of the Government, which constantly 
stimulates the fatal tendency of the masses in France to look to that 
kind of excitement.”— Times. 

“ All Paris is laughing at the solemn announcement of the Con- 
stitutionnel , that the finances of France are to be set right by a tax 
on ‘lucifer matches,’ which it is naively said would be quite justified 
‘by the recent lamentable accidents,’ and by a tax on ‘pianos,’ 
which, it is added, would not press on the ‘working classes.’ That 
a paper professedly in the confidence of the Government should put 
forth such absurdities with a grave face, is only a measure of the 
helplessness of the Empire, which, with a bankrupt exchequer, 
cannot retrench and dares not tax.” 

“ The debate on the ‘ rectified Budget of 1862 ’ in the Legislative 


OUGHT FBANCE TO WOllSHIP THE BONAPABTES ? 


15 


o 

o 


Body the other day lias shown that though, in consequence of M. 
Fould’s financial statement last autumn twelvemonth, ‘ extraordinary 
credits,’ authorised by Imperial decree, were radically suppressed, 
the same 1 extraordinary credits,’ in virtue of Ministerial orders, 
were still possible; and that if the Emperor gave up one of his pre¬ 
rogatives, it reverted to his Ministers. In June, last year, the Legis¬ 
lative Body voted a sum of 16,000,000f. for the Mexican expedition. 
A couple of months later, the Government increased considerably the 
military and naval forces employed in that expedition; and, as it 
could not be done without cost, it involved an additional outlay of 
2G,000,000f., without the operation of transfer from one estimate to 
another, on the simple authority of the Minister of War and Marine, 
or without reference to the head paymaster, the Minister of Finance. 
This irregularity, to use the mildest term, was so palpable, that it 
could not be denied.” 

“Several persons on Monday, among others MM. Baroche and 
Morny, went to talk over the matter with him, and try to induce 
him to withdraw his resignation, but M. Fould was inexorable. 
The Emperor then requested him to be at the Tuileries on Tuesday, 
at noon. M. Fould, of course, obeyed, and was received in the 
most gracious and kindly manner. In the course of conversation 
he expressed himself earnestly on the inconvenience of one, who is 
charged with such a load as the finances of an empire, and who is 
sincerely desirous of serving Ilis Majesty, being constantly exposed 
to attacks from his own colleagues, whose duty, on the contraiy, 
was to support him. The Emperor assented; but as for M. 
Walewski (who was suspected of having something to do with the 
present affair), the Emperor declared, that he had nothing to do with 
it, and therefore he did not see the necessity or justice of dismissing 
him; but as regarded M. Magno lie might do as he pleased, for M. 
Fould declared, that M. Magne or himself must go. The Emperor 
gave up M. Magne, who will probably be changed into Vice-Presi¬ 
dent of the Senate, a place vacated not long ago by M. de Parriou, 
where there is good pay (50,000f. a year), and nothing whatever to 
do, and which, but for this incident, would be suppressed. Thus, I 
believe, the matter rests for the moment.”— Times. 

“All France is now aware, that the prodigality of the Empire is 
entailing its consequences. The annual expenditure of the country, 
we read in one of the election addresses before us, has increased 


154 


OUGHT EilAHCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


from 1,443 millions of francs in 1851 to 2,200 millions in 1861, 
showing an increase of 750 millions in ten years, in which the 
interest on the Bussian and Italian war loans stands hut for 100 
millions. New taxes to the amount of 74 millions had to he laid 
on last year, and the Budget of 1864 amounts, as just voted, to 44 
millions more than that of 1863. The Budget of the year 1852, 
we read in another address, was definitively fixed at 1,491 millions 
of francs; that just voted for 1864 is fixed at 2,104 millions, It is 
obvious to prove that it is on its way towards a third milliard,”—- 
Times. 

“It is not improbable this increase in the demand for money 
may be connected in some way with the irregular operations of the 
Bank of France. It is now pretty generally understood that the 
bullion reserve of the Bank of France must be increased previous 
to the publication of the next monthly return. This will be accom¬ 
plished by means of London credits, or by the transmission of bills 
to certain agents or brokers, in order to be discounted in our market, 
and the proceeds sent to Paris in specie.”— lb. 

“ M. Barrot does not separate them, and when, in common with 
the whole body of the taxpayers, he is dismayed at the ever- 
increasing advance of Budgets, which have exceeded 2,000 millions, 
and, what is still more alarming, that of the public debt, he does 
not seek the cause of it in this or that financial system more or less 
ingeniously imagined, but in the imperfections of the political 
guarantees possessed by the nation.”— lb. 

“ In examining the financial measures voted last Session, it will 
bo found that the Budget lias been progressively increasing. The 
Budget of the year 1852, the first of the new Empire, was 
definitively fixed at 1,491,000,OOOf. The Budget of 1859, which 
was voted by the deputies elected in 1857, was definitively fixed at 
2,207,000,OOOf. The Budget of 1860 was definitively fixed at 

2,207,000,OOOf. The Budget of 1861 was definitively fixed at 

2,235,000,OOOf. The Budget of 1862, with the supplementary 

credits voted in the Session of 1863, amounts to 2,269,000,OOOf. 
The Budget of 1863 has been fixed provisionally at 2,064,000,OOOf. 
The Budget for 1864, as voted by the last Chamber, is fixed at 
2,104,000,OOOf. The last Chamber attained the formidable figure 
of 2,000,000,OOOf., and the Budget is progressing towards a third 
milliard.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE DONAPARTES ? 


155 


A close resemblance to the subjoined portraits may be traced by 
those best acquainted with the prosperous public men in France:— 

* ‘ Cum alii sint a rationibus, alii a poculis, alii a voluptatibus, tu 
iis commodissime sane eris a perjuriis; tu regi non elegantim, nam 
inscitus nimium es, sed perfidhe summus arbiter eris.”— Milton. 

il Nullum gustum virtutis, et quce de ilia nascitur, libertatis 
habcs; omnes esse servos cupis, quod nihil in tuo pectore generosum 
aut liberum sentis, nihil non ignobile atque servile aut loqueris, 
aut spiras.”— lb. 

“ TJt cuivis evidens sit, contemtu magis quam gratia electum,” 
—Suetonius. 

One strong confirmation of this view may be derived from the 
pains taken by the men in authority to browbeat and blacken M. 
Mires, of whom most of them had been the patrons, the instigators, 
and the accomplices. 

“ He complained bitterly, that, during the whole time of his pre¬ 
ventive imprisonment, M. Mires had been kept au secret (in secret 
confinement), and had not even been allowed free intercourse with 
his family. . . M. Mires asked leave to speak for a few 

moments. In endeaving to obtain the protection of the Tribunal 
for the rights of his defence, he was not surprised at the difficulties 
thrown in his way. Hitherto he had suffered by the want of free 
communication; he had suffered from humiliating precautions, which 
had been resorted to against him. He had not been permitted to 
see his wife or daughter, except in the presence of an inspector. 
The President—‘ We can’t allow you to go on.’ The Court retired 
to consider, and on its return pronounced a judgment, refusing M, 
Mathieu’s application on every point.” 


156 


OUGHT FKANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


IV.— Extravagance and Etiquette—Pomp and 

Pampering . 

When the Bonapartes, like a swarm of locusts, entered into u great 
and goodly cities, which they built not, and houses full of all good 
things, which they filled not, and vineyards and olive trees, which 
they planted not,” Mepliistophiles welcomed them with an approving 
smile, and exclaimed— 

Tenez vous lieu detout, comptez pour rien le reste. 

La. Fontaine. 

We may picture to ourselves the feeling of haughtiness and hilarity 
with which the perjured parvenu entered, as possessor, the time- 
honoured palaces of France’s legitimate monarclis, now destined to 
be the abodes of luxury and lust. 

Quella colpa che guida sul trono 
Sfortunata, non trova perdono ; 

Ma, felice, si chiama valor. 

Metastasio. 

Swell, swell, my joys ; and faint not to declare 
Yourselves as ample as your causes are. 

I did not live till now—’tis my first hour, 

Wherein I see my thoughts reach’d by my pow’r, 

And gripe at last my wishes ; great and high, 

The world knows only two—that’s France and I. 

My roof receives me not, ’tis air I tread, 

And, at each step, I feel my advanc’d head 
Knock out a star in heaven ! Rear’d to this height, 

All my desires seem modest, poor, and slight, 

That did before sound impudent. ’Tis place, 

Not blood, discerns the noble and the base. 

Ben Jonson. 

My meat shall all come in on Indian shells, 

Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded 
With em’raids, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies ; 

And I will eat my broths with spoons of amber, 

Headed with diamond and carbuncle ; 

Pheasants, knots, godwits, calver’d salmons, turbots, 

Dressed with an exquisite and poynant sauce.— lb. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


157 


Car j’ai pour tout conscil ma fantaisio a suivre, 

Et me trouve fort bien de ma fagon de vivrc. 

Moliere. 

“ Le luxe le dispute au merveilleux des fables, et dans la peinture 
de ses folies, la vraisemblance manque a la verite.”— Marmontel. 

“ The Court is said to be greatly enjoying itself at Compiegne, 
and some of the most dignified personages in the State eagerly con¬ 
tribute to the diversions of the distinguished guests, who share in the 
festivities. Two exquisite farces have been written expressly for tho 
occasion—viz., the Corde Sensible and La Succession Bonnet. Duke 
Mornv, President of the Legislative Corps, member of the great 
Privy Council, &c., is said.to be the author of one of these pieces—• 
probably the Corde Sensible —and takes part as an actor in the per¬ 
formance. Senators on the wintry side of 60 play, one the part of 
jeune premier , and another that of a most comical notary public.”—• 
Times. 

11 There are to be great doings at Compiegne during the stay of 
the Court there next month. There are to be three series of guests 
—each of which is to stay nine days—theatricals, and stag hunts. 
Our ambassador, as you are aware, resides (almost permanently, 
indeed) at Chantilly, in a villa which stands at no great distance 
from the grounds of the Palace. And on dit, that the intercourse of 
her Majesty’s representative with the Imperial family dining the 
villegiatura, is of the most intimate and confidential kind.”— lb. 

11 Neither the fall of the Italian Ministry, nor the Greek question, 
nor the delay in General Forey’s promised conquests in Mexico, nor 
the disturbances in the finances, produce any lull in the festivities at 
Compiegne. Hunting, shooting, indoor and outdoor sports of every 
kind are devised by the Imperial Amphitryon to drive dull care 
away from Compiegne. Tableaux vivants are the last invented enter¬ 
tainment ; they are said to have been admirably represented.”— 
Liberal paper. 

“ Generally speaking, none adapt themselves more easily to Court 
ceremonies than the converted Democrat. Others may bow low 
enough, but he will be the first to fall flat on his face, and, if 
required, move backwards in the Siamese fashion. The flexibility 
of an ex-Bepublican knows no limit. Four-and-twenty quarto pages 
are filled with the details of the ceremonial to be observed at Court 
on the 1st and 2nd of January. In pursuance of those rules, the 


158 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPANTES ? 


receptions opened at half-past 11 o’clock yesterday, in the apart¬ 
ments of the Empress, where their Majesties received the Prince and 
Princesses of the Imperial family, and the Prince and Princesses of 
the Emperor' 1 8 family holding rank at Court.”— Times. 

Unto men 

Brest with their wants, all change is ever welcome. 

Ben Jonson. 

It is a note 

Of upstart greatness, to observe and watch 
For these poor trifles, which the noble mind 
Neglects and scorns; aye, and they think themselves 
Deeply dishonoured, when they arc omitted, 

As if they were necessities, that help’d 
To the perfection of their dignities, 

And hate the men that but refrain them—nay, 

There is a further cause of hate—their breasts 
Are guilty, that we know their obscure springs, 

And base beginnings ; thence the anger grows.— lb. 

“ A programme, filling 11 pages quarto, issued by tlie Duke de 
Cambaceres, Grand Master of Ceremonies, describes with, the 
utmost minuteness the etiquette observed at the distribution of the 
recompenses, accorded to the successful exhibitors at the London 
Exhibition, which took place yesterday in the Grand Hall of the 
Louvre.” 

“ The last week of the festivities at the Chateau of Compiegne was 
particularly gay. On Sunday afternoon, there was a display of fire¬ 
works in the park by Buggieri, in his happiest style. The Arab 
chiefs, usually so reserved, could not restrain the expression of their 
admiration. On Tuesday there was a dramatic representation of the 
JBossu, directed by M. Aniset Bourgeois, who brought with him to 
the Chateau a theatrical company of 128 persons, including figurantes 
and scene-shifters .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ The repairs of the palace of the Tuileries are being carried on 
with the greatest possible despatch. If they are not completed 
by the time that the period of the Emperor’s visit to Com¬ 
piegne shall have expired, the Imperial family will occupy the 
Elysee. It is said, that the decorations of the latter palace are un¬ 
usually magnificent.”— lb. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BOHAPARTES ? 


159 


France is to him a chessboard, on which he moves all the pieces, 
whether knights, bishops, or pawns, precisely as he pleases. 

The attendance at the Court of Compiegne reminds one of a 
game at whist, from which all the Court cards, have been taken 
away. Louis Philippe might have said with much truth (though the 
remark is less applicable to the faithful adherents of Charles X.)— 

II est environne tie la foule infidellc, 

Des memes courtisans, que j’ai vus autrefois,' 

S’erapresser a ma suite, et ramper sous mes loi. 

Voltaire. 

It may be worth while to record a few of the numberless instances, 
in which the ardent and obsequious adherents of the Second of 
December have purchased his favour by the blackest ingratitude 
towards preceding dynasties. 

“ To mark his sense of the zeal displayed towards the Government 
of the day, M. Guizot offered M. Guerault in 1842 the post of 
Consul in Mexico, and I have never heard, that M. Guerault, then a 
writer for the Journal des Debats , rejected the offer with indignation. 
If he did feel indignant, he subdued his feelings, or hid them from 
the world, for I find, that he held his Consulate for five long years. 
Moreover, he so mastered his anger as subsequently to accept the 
more lucrative office of Consul at Jassy, which he hold for three 
years, and which he only quitted when dismissed, perhaps for the 
crime of ultra-Orleanism, by the revolutionary Government of 
February. I do not mean to question the sincerity of his present 
opinions. Every one has a right to his opinions, and a right to 
change them; but it argues a strange want of the most ordinary 
tact, not to say of gratitude, to load with obloquy those, from whom 
you accept favours up to the last moment, in which they have it in 
their power to confer them.”— Times. 

“The only ‘attack’ on M. Walewski was the mention of his 
having begun his consular or his diplomatic career under the patron¬ 
age of Louis Philippe’s Minister, who found it easy to silence his 
opposition by buying up his newspaper, the Messenger , and sending 
himself on some mission to Egypt; of his having received a similar 
mission from another Minister under the same Government, when he 
was apparently as warm an Orleanist, as he is now apparently a 
warm Bonapartist. These are not ‘ attacks ’ but facts. It is true, 


160 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


that, very recently, the department of the ‘ Maison de l’Empereur ’ 
has been detached from the departments of State to which it 
belonged from the commencement; and the Sevres manufactory is 
perhaps comprised in the former. Be this as it may, it is not the 
less true, that the director was forbidden to execute an order, not 
because of the regulations of the manufactory, but because it came 
from a member of the exiled Royal family. If Marshal Yaillant be 
the ‘ Minister of the Imperial Household ’ who forbade the order, 
it is equally to be wondered at. It is true he was made a Marshal 
—it was said somewhat out of his turn—by the President of the 
[Republic of 1849, Senator, Count, and Grand Marshal of the Palace, 
but he was not unduly neglected, or his merits passed over by the 
Orleans Government. He was made Colonel in 1833, Major-General 
in 1838, Commandant of the Polytechnic School in 1839, Director of 
the Paris Fortifications in 1840, and Lieutenant-General in 1845, all 
under the Orleans regime. I do not mean to say, that this fair 
advancement was undeserved—-quite the contrary. Still, as the 
world goes, it is something to have one’s merits appreciated and 
rewarded by the discerning few; and the refusal of a few articles of 
earthenware to the family, who knew how to appreciate and reward 
them, may be the modern, but it is certainly a peculiar, mode of 
expressing gratitude.”— Times. 

"When, from official or social considerations, any man, who 
cherishes a spirit of integrity or of independence, is present at these 
orgies, there is visible on his countenance 11 ce sourire force, avec 
lequel la politesse tachc de deguiser la mauvaise humour. ”— 
Marmontel. 

“ In France shows are a matter of serious State policy. They are 
the cheap defence of order—the breakwater which the Saviour of 
society opposes to the revolutionary passions of his people. The 
love of freedom may be strong in France, but the love of sights is 
stronger. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

The man of December seems glad of any opportunity to snub his 
Piedmontese vassal, and show how little difference lie really makes 
between his partisans and those of the Bourbon dynasty. In his 
heart he only cares for the Muratists. 

‘‘A certain number of Neapolitan refugees— Reactionnaires —had 
the honour of being invited to the ball given by the Empress on 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


161 


Monday night last. They were, it is said, not much surprised, 
agreeably, or otherwise, and of course accepted the invitation. Tho 
Emperor conversed with them for some time, and was particular in 
his inquiries about the King. Prince Napoleon was not present. 
He excused himself on the ground, that he, the son-in-law of Victor 
Emmanuel, Kang of Italy, could not well meet persons, who still 
regarded King Francis as King of the two Sicilies, and who wore on 
their breasts crosses and stars given by him. The Minister of Italy, 
who was to have presented a certain number of Piedmontese, also 
excused himself, and the Piedmontese were informed, that their 
presentation must take place some other time.”— Times. 

“At such most imposing receptions, name after name is announced 
without recalling one historic association or exciting one throb of 
interest. The curious stranger has no occasion to lean forward to 
see the famous poet, the great painter, the renowned historian, or the 
distinguished orator. The names and titles are new; the bearers 
of them look conscious of the fact; and the female portion of the 
company seem to rest their claims to distinction on their toilette, 
which is of a far more showy and expensive description, than would 
have been deemed in good taste in the olden time. If we look 
below the surface, and inquire how these decores gentlemen and 
decolletees ladies amuse themselves in their lighter hours, there is 
little reassuring or satisfactory in the result. Intellectual pleasures 
have little or no relish for persons of either sex, who have suddenly 
attained or been flung into a position, above their original education 
or their hopes. They have neither the acquirements, the habits, 
nor the repose of mind, requisite for the enjoyment of good conver¬ 
sation or (to use the aptest and untranslatable word) causerie. They 
delight in fine apartments, fine furniture, fine equipages, and fine 
clothes. They estimate an entertainment by its cost, and they 
delight in costumed hunting-parties, masked or fancy dress balls, 
private theatricals, games of romps and petits jeux (which may or 
may not be) innocents.”—Saturday Review. 

It is thus, that the immense revenues of a great nation are wasted 
in revellings and riotous living. The Man of December’s gorgeous 
profusion involves himself, as well as the public revenues, in embar¬ 
rassment and incumbrance. His most confidential favourites are 
implicated in those base practices of scandalous jobbery, which have, 

L 


162 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


of late years, nnliappily debased and deteriorated all classes of the 
French community. 

A letter of the first Bonaparte to Prince Eugene might, with 
equal propriety, have been addressed to his present august repre¬ 
sentative :— 

“My Son,— You have managed your affairs very badly in Paris. I 
have just had sent to me an account amounting to a million and a 
half of francs for your house. This is enormous. M. Culmelet, 
Bataille, and the little intendant you have appointed, are cheats; 
and I see, that they have so embarrassed everything , that it will be impossible 
not to pay a great deal. I see all this with pain. I thought you were 
more orderly. Nothing should be done without an estimate, and 
the resolution not to exceed it. You have done quite the contrary. 
The architect has had it all his own way; here are immense sums 
thrown into the river.” 

“ Censorious persons in Paris have been drawing comparisons 
between the meagre Imperial contribution to the distressed opera¬ 
tives of France, and the munificent donation of the Earl of Derby 
to the Lancashire Belief Fund. The Morning Advertiser 1 s Paris cor¬ 
respondent thinks*, that the Emperor is somewhat hardly dealt with, 
for, though the Imperial revenue amounts to nearly £1,500,000, 
His Majesty not only spends the whole of it, but is at the present 
time so pressed for funds, that he is about to borrow £480,000 from 
M. de Bothschild. This fact, it is added, is now given as an explana¬ 
tion of the Emperor’s condescension in visiting on Tuesday the 
great Hebrew capitalist—a visit, which has been sorely criticised by 
the Parisians.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ In Paris precautions, are being taken to prevent the circulation 
of a pamphlet by Mires, giving the names of the frequenters of the 
Tuileries, whom he had bribed.”— lb. 

“ M. Mane, who pleaded for M. Mires, demanded a delay, in 
consequence of M. Mires having been unable to obtain private com¬ 
munication with his counsel. The President, a M. Masse, responded 
somewhat petulantly, that such permission had been granted to 
Mires. ‘Admitted,’ replied M. Mane; ‘but as my client was 
closeted in confidential communication with his counsel, he heard 
something stirring , and discovered a police agent secreted behind the door. 
He instantly withdrew, and told the spy, that, since he had been 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


163 


posted there by the Government, the Government must bear the 
brunt of further delay, for that he would not condescend to submit 
to such humiliating espionage.”— Ih. 

“The completion of what was begun in 1848, and carried out 
with greater energy since 1851, maybe seen in the events of the 
present time. The people are changed; their army, their navy, their 
commerce, their modes of travel, their political desires, their occu¬ 
pations, their amusements, have all been Imperialised. For good or 
evil, France has quitted the form, under which we knew her in the 
old times, and now animates another, to which ice are only just growing 
accustomed. Very little speculation, political or religious, not very 
much genius, except in those sciences, which are furthest from the 
affairs of daily life, is now to be found in France. Once every man 
of ambition would be a journalist and orator, for to write or speak 
brilliantly was the most speedy way to fortune. Now the path is 
deserted, for it is far more likely to incur the ill will of great men, than 
to extort deference from them; it is, moreover, unfashionable, being 
neither popular with society, nor honoured by the people.”— Times. 

“ La cour du tyran etait remplie d’espions et de delateurs; cortege 
ordinaire des hommes puissans, qui ne pouvant se faire aimer, 
mettent leur grandeur a se faire craindre.”— Marmontel. 

“Ilsavourait a longs traits, avec une orgueilleuse modestie les 
douceurs de l’adoration.”— Ih. 

The vast sums lavished upon feasts, finery, and furniture, excite 
no ordinary degree of astonishment and animadversion; and the 
question is often asked, “To what purpose is this waste?” In 
order to pacify and propitiate the working classes, and at the same 
time facilitate, in case of revolt, the reiteration of such carnage as 
has rendered the earliest days of December infamous in the annals 
of France, old houses have been levelled with the ground at an 
enormous expense, and new and splendid ones erected in their 
places. But this change has in nowise contributed to render Paris 
more happy or more prosperous. The ill-paid employes or artizans, 
who saunter about these spacious streets, of which they never con¬ 
template any part except the outer walls, can derive as little satis¬ 
faction from exclaiming, “See what manner of stones, and what 
buildings are here !” as from looking through the kitchen windows, 
and eyeing accumulated luxuries, of which they are never destined 
to partake, and exclaiming one to another, “See what manner of 

l 2 


164 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


soups, and salmon, and turkeys, and truffle pies, and veal, and 
venison, are there!” 


Pour le peuple est l’age de fer, 

Et l’age d’or est pour le Prince. 

Voltaire. 

“Now the Emperor is in the condition of the wizard who was 
compelled to employ the evil spirit he had raised, under the penalty 
of being torn to pieces. From three to four hundred thousand 
workpeople have found employment, directly or indirectly, in these 
boasted improvements ; and square acres of excavations, scaffolding, 
ruins or shells of houses, with miles of new boulevards, attest the 
pressing necessity for still finding work for them. If the market 
price of bread or meat rises, a maximum is proclaimed, and the 
difference is made good to the butchers and bakers by the Govern¬ 
ment or the municipality. This cannot last for ever .”—Saturday 
Review . 

The feeling of discontent, disappointment, and disgust has en¬ 
gendered many plots, which must at the same time endanger the 
security, and mar the enjoyments, of a reckless and rapacious 
dynasty, during whose rule less has been expended in useful works 
than by former Governments, whilst the annual estimates have been 
exceded to a far more unaccountable extent. 

“A Paris letter says: ‘Since the discovery of the Boulevard 
Prince Eugene Plot, which every day assumes larger proportions as 
facts creep out, the police service at Compiegne has been tripled. 
The most minute precautions have been taken. The famous Corsi¬ 
can guard, which is always about the Emperor’s person in plain 
clothes, is divided into three sections, and watches day and night 
without intermission. The Emperor has been advised to resume the 
coat of mail under his shirt, which he left off wearing in 1859, on 
account of the great discomfort of it. In spite of all the efforts made 
to throw a veil over the real state of things, the guests are aware, 
that the palace is swarming with spies, and there is in consequence 
much less gaiety in the court society than there was last year.” 

“To bring the poor man to the rich, to make room for them in 
the same quarter, if not in the same house, is the great commence¬ 
ment of charity, and of Christian equality; but the Paris of our 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


165 


day does exactly the reverse. The luxury of our streets and our houses , 
and the dearness of our lodgings , drive the poor man far away from the 
rich. Paris is derided into tribes , differing in life , in manners , in ideas , 
and in sentiments. The tents of these tribes cnnnot in one day 
approach each other any more than their hearts.”— French Paper. 

‘ 1 Since the Empire, public works have had an annual average 
of only 70,000,000f .; the nine last years of the previous reign 
show an average of 120,000,000f.”— Casimir Perrier. 

“A policy controlled by the Chambers in France spend 
1,249,000,OOOf. (or a yearly average of 73,000,000f.) more than 
estimated; on the other hand, in the first nine years of the new 
regime , the sums of which the Legislative Corps had only to confirm 
the employment, instead of providing and regulating, amounted to 
2,939,000,OOOf., or a yearly average of 325,000,OOOf.”— lb. 

And now what rests, but that we spend the time 
With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows, 

Such as befit the pleasures of the court. 

Shakespeare. 

It is not easy to understand where the Man of December has 
acquired these habits of pomp and profusion. Not from his mother 
whilst living as an exile ; not from his own obscure residence in 
the British metropolis. Even the maitre d'hotel at Compiegne might, 
I think, sometimes be shocked and scandalized at the daily extra¬ 
vagance of the Imperial Court; we may conceive him saying to 
poor M. Fould, when the Finance Minister is shrugging up his 
shoulders, and thinking whence the funds for payment of this 
“ excess of riot ” are to be screwed:— 

Der edle wein! Wenn meine alte Herrschaft, 

Die Frau Mama, das wilde Leben sail’, 

In ihrem crabe kehrte sie sich um, 

Ja, hochgeehrter Fould ! Kein Maas noch Ziel! 

Bedienter ( Kommt ). 

Burgunder fur den, vierten Tisch. 

Kellermeister (J Das ist ). 

Die siebenzigste Flaschenun, Herr Fould! 

Bedienter. 

Das mcscht, der Britt’sche Herr, Lord Palmerstone, 

Sitzt dran— 


166 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES? 


Kellermeister. 

Seht nach den Tischen! nach den Flaschcn ! da ! 

Graf Cowley hat ein leeres Glaa yor sich! 

VlERTER BeDIENTER. 

Ich mach mir an des Russell semen Stuhl, 

Bestiindig auch zu thun, so yiel ich kann, 

Der fiihrt dir gar verwundersame Meden. 

Kellermeister. 

Die kaiserliche Majestat steht auf! 

Sie machen Aufbruch ! Fort und riickt die Sessel. 

Schiller. 

Each, of the favourite parasites at the Imperial “banquet of wine ” 
is “ the most strenuous supporter of arbitrary power, the fondest 
follower and admirer of the luxury, the magnificence, the alliance of 
tyrants. ”— Plutarch. 

My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear, 

And I will stoop and humble my intents 
To your well practis’d wise directions. 

Shakespeare. 

There may be one here, or another there, who, in secret, whispers 
an expression of concern and censure, when speaking of this unpar¬ 
donable and unprecedented profusion; 

Cependant a vos yeux a peine il ne se montre 
Qu’on ne vous voie en hate aller a sa rencontre 
Yous courber sur sa main et d’un baiser flatteur 
Appuyer le serment d’etre son serviteur. 

Moliere. 

And he would shrink from the warning of any high-minded friend 
who might say,— 

Arrachez yous d’un lieu funeste et profane, 

Ou la yertu respire un eur empoisonne. 

Racine. 

“From the beauty of Fontainbleau Palace as a residence, the 
historical associations connected with it, and the splendour of the 
adjacent forest, mere upholstery, pomp, and tawdry Imperial decora¬ 
tions might be dispensed with.”— Press. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


167 


Should the poor be flattered ? 

No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, 

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, 

Where thrift may follow fawning. 

Shakespeare. 

“ If any one were to go and see a gallery, a hall, or bath, or the 
apartments of the women, in Domitian’s Palace, what is said by 
Epicharmus of a prodigal— 

Your lavished stores speak not the liberal mind, 

But the disease of giving—• 

might be applied to Domitian in some such manner as this: 
1 Neither piety, nor magnificence appear in your expense, you have 
the disease of building. Like Midas of old, you would turn everything 
to gold and marble.”— Plutarch , Publicola. 

11 The French Court.— A grand hunt is to come off at Fontain- 
bleau this week. A great number of visitors are staying at the 
chateau. The Empress (says a Paris letter) has made some curious 
sumptuary edicts this season, one of which is that, with the exception 
of the lingerie , every visible article of ladies’ clothing must be of the 
same colour as her gown. For instance, a lady wearing a yellow 
dress, must wear also yellow boots, yellow gloves, yellow trimmings 
on her hat or bonnet, a yellow cloak, and a yellow parasol. Those 
wearing yellow, or lilac, or blue, or green, or pink, must form into 
distinct groups or regiments, so as to constitute a striking coup d'ceil , 
and no lady must wear the same uniform twice while staying at the 
chateau P 

English statesmen would rather have feasted with Caesar, who 
succeeded in destroying the liberties of his country, and honoured 
him with many honours, than have shared the hardships of Cato, 
who laid down his life in their defence. 

Tby sumptous buildings and thy wife's attire, 

Have cost a mass of public treasury. 

Shakespeare. 

Pirates may make cheap penn’orths of their pillage, 

And purchase friends, and give to courtesans, 

Still revelling like lords, till all be gone.— lb. 

u The only principle—if principle it can be called—which connects 



/ 




168 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

together these various ideas, is the establishment of his dynasty, and 
the conviction, that the best way to secure it is by feeding the national 
vanity of the French people.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ France has a splendid Imperialism, which seems to bo to her 
taste. ”— Saturday Review. 

“The object was to lay out a capital in such a way, as to secure 
the most uninterrupted play for artillery, which is the special glory 
of the Second Empire.”— lb. 

‘ ‘ There is a rumour of a note addressed by Prussia to the German 
powers, disclaiming all political objects in the visit to Compiegne; 
and putting it forward as a mere return of civilities.”— lb. 

“ A Fancy Ball at the Tuileries. —The fancy ball given by 
their Majesties at the Tuileries on Monday night was remarkable 
alike for its magnificence, its animation, and its infinite variety. 
The splendour of the rooms, the richness of the costumes, and the 
originality of the dancers rendered this fete of extraordinary 
brilliancy. Not more than 600 invitations had been sent, so that 
the company was unusually select; still it embraced all the highest 
personages in Paris (? ?). The Empress was attired as a Venetian lady 
of the middle ages, her dress, crimson and black, being covered with 
sequins interspersed with diamonds. The Emperor wore a Venetian 
mantle of white and crimson; and it was remarked, that several 
high dignitaries had on a somewhat similar costume. The Prince 
Imperial, in black vest and continuations, with crimson stockings 
and Venetian mantle, remained in the rooms until eleven.” 

“ The array of laqueys was quite imposing. The number of foot¬ 
men that are in waiting at the palace is almost incredible.”— 
French Author. 

“His Imperial Majesty does not walk like any other person in 
France. The manner, in which he moves about, is most peculiar. He 
does not exactly glide, and his step is too stealthy and unelastic to 
admit of its being called a kind of gentle skating. But whatever 
it may or may not be like, it is impossible for any one, who has 
ever been in the same room with the Emperor, to fail to detect him 
by it from among a thousand, no matter how well he might be dis¬ 
guised.”— lb. 

“ Because the historical Bonapartean physiognomy is remarkable 
for a strong jaw-bone, every prince and princess of the Imperial 
family, with the exception of the Emperor, assert their Bonapartean 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


1G9 


blood by protruding their chins and clenching their teeth, although 
there are some of them, who, if they followed nature, would allow 
that portion of their faces to retreat .”—French Author. 

u Of the Emperor alone there are, I believe, not less than sixteen 
portraits in martial or civic costume; eight, I think, of the Empress, 
six of the Prince Imperial, five of Prince Napoleon, and four of the 
Princess Clotilde. The rules of hierarchy and the beautiful 
gradation of etiquette cannot be more scrupulously observed. The 
portraits of the other personages belonging, more or less, to the 
Imperial family are numerous enough; and of them it certainly 
cannot be said, as of the statues of Brutus and Cassius, that they 
shine by their absence; quite the contrary. I notice the fact simply 
to show how flourishing official painting is in France.”— Times. 

u One of the strangest signs of the present time is the ostentatious 
conservatism of the rich people at Paris. What has happened in 
England, and will happen everywhere that great prosperity reigns, 
is now to be seen in full force in France. A newly rich society is 
courting the aristocracy, which it inveighed against and ridiculed 
before it had made money. Connection with the old families, 
however vague or imaginary, is thought by those who pretend to it 
to confer a social advantage. The opinions of the Legitimists, 
formerly the jests of cafe and theatre, are now affected, as indicating 
something ancient, dignified, and fastidious. As in England a pru¬ 
dent stockbroker will adopt Conservative principles, if he wishes to 
get on in society, so, in Prance, people affect the prejudices of the old 
nobility, in order to be thought to belong to it.”— lb. 

“It is not very often that any facts come to light, which might 
give reality and consistency to the French view of the higher life. 
Whenever we do get a glimpse of the society, from which we 
suppose these ideals are drawn, to be afterwards copied by English 
novelists, we generally find it as unprincipled as it is described, but 
lamentably devoid of that refinement, which robs vice of its gross¬ 
ness, monotonously selfish, and possessed of no secrets for increasing 
the zest of social enjoyment that have not been long known to men 
of pleasure. To the eyes of the initiated the 1 fast ’ life of Paris 
in the nineteenth century strongly resembles that of London in the 
eighteenth century, with carriages instead of sedan chairs, and gas 
instead of candles.”— lb. 

1 ‘The people I see here are all highly anti-imperial, and I have 


170 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


the satisfaction of hearing the utmost abhorrence of the Emperor 
constantly expressed. The complimentary strains of the English 
papers towards him lately, in return for his soft-sawder to us, has ex¬ 
cited considerable disgust here ; the idea of his pretending to desire, 
that France should attain by degrees to the same liberty as is enjoyed 
in England, while he, by force and fraud, represses every utterance of 
the most moderate liberal opinion among his subjects!”— Pvivate 
Letter. 

“The great Doctor Veron first said something about a tax on 
lucifer matches, and, I believe, pianos; and this, although he has 
set people laughing, which perhaps was all he wanted, may not be 
so unfounded after all. I cannot make even a guess as to what the 
lucifers would produce, but an alarmed courtier said yesterday that it 
would hardly pay the expense of the present festivities at Compiegne , still 
less the demolitions and repairs going on in the Palace of the Tuileries, 
ivhich ivill cost , it is said about 50 millions of francs. This, however, 
is too absurdly extravagant to be correct. A tax on cigars is again 
spoken of, which may end in smoke, as well as on carriages, horses 
(chevaux de luxe), and male servants. Dogs are already 1 imposed ’ 
as much as they can well bear.”— Times. 

“It is remarked, that, at the Paris Mint, a vast quantity of new 
Napoleons are being struck off, the peculiarity of which is, that the 
Imperial brows are now encircled with a laurel wreath, after the 
fashion of the dynasty’s founder, the baptism of victory having been 
received at Solferino. An olive branch, doubtless, would have been 
a more satisfactory emblem, but it behoves those, who provoke war 
by refusals of just concessions, to look to it.”— Globe's Paris Letter. 

There are many recollections, which may make him anxious, by 
f5tes and fopperies, to “steep his senses in forgetfulness.” 

“We know, that he shrinks from no crime, which he deems likely 
to serve his purpose; but no one ever took him for a fiend who 
would delight in oppression for its own sake.”— Saturday Review. 

“ It is certain, that, with a pen in his hand, and with sufficient time 
for preparation, he could imitate very neatly the scrupulous language 
of a man of honour.”— Kinglahe. 

“ One of the ornaments, which the Prince wore, was a sword; yet, 
without striking a blow, he suffered himself to bo publicly stripped of 
the Legion of Honour and all his other decorations. According to 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


171 


one account, the angry colonel inflicted this dishonour with his own 
hands, and not only pulled the grand cordon from the Prince’s 
bosom, but tore off his epaulettes, and trampled both epaulettes and 
grand cordon under foot. When he had been thus stripped, the Prince 
was locked up. The decorated followers, who had been impersonat¬ 
ing the Imperial staff, underwent the same fate as their chief.”— 
Kinglalce. 

“The truth is, that the sources of his boldness were his vanity 
and his theatrical bent; and these passions, though they had power 
to bring him to the verge of danger, were not robust enough to hold 
good against man’s natural shrinking from the risk of being killed 
—being killed within the next minute.”— II. 

The Bonapartes are not treated with as much ceremony at Wash¬ 
ington as at Paris. 

“Prince Napoleon and President Lincoln. —The New York 
correspondent of the Morning Post says: ‘1 have heard some curious 
anecdotes of Prince Napoleon’s visit to Washington, and his disgust 
at the reception he met. It is well known, that the Prince, though 
politically a strong Liberal, is, personally, the last man in the world 
to dispense with any attentions, which are due to his position, and 
that he is peculiarly sensitive to any want of savoir vivre among those 
with whom he may be thrown in contact. It is no wonder, therefore, 
that he was extremely disgusted with his dinner-party at Mr. 
Seward’s. When the Prince was announced, the Secretary did not 
think it necessary to go down stairs to receive him, or even to cross 
the drawing-room door, but allowed him to enter the room like 
any ordinary guest. He was punctual, which was more than 
many of the guests were; and as each entered in succession, 
Mr. Seward did not scruple to interrupt his conversation by pre¬ 
senting them in turn, without leave asked or given—‘ Prince, Mr. 
Senator Smith,’ and so on. At the White House it was even worse. 
There he was left for a quarter of an hour in the room by himself 
before anyone appeared, which drew from him the remark, ‘Next 
time I dine here, I shall come at ten o’clock.’ Possibly the Presi¬ 
dent’s political duties may have detained him, but Mrs. Lincoln 
might have been present. When Mr. Lincoln did arrive, his conver¬ 
sation was not of a nature to improve His Imperial Highness’s 
temper. Some of the accounts of what passed are almost too 


172 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


ridiculous to be true, but this is certainly authentic :—‘ Prince, how 
many brothers had the Emperor?’ 4 Pour.’ 4 Oh, what were their 
names ?’ The Prince rather sulkily gave the names. 4 And you, I 
think, are the son of Lucien ?’ It is perhaps not to be wondered at 
that Mr. Lincoln, called from his country-lawyer’s desk at Spring - 
field, should not be very well up in the history of the Napoleon 
family, but it is rather odd that at the very time that the proces 
Patterson wa>s exciting so much interest in America, the President 
of the United States should not know who the Emperor’s father 
was.” 


V .—Foreign Policy of the Second December. 

In order to ascertain the principles, and appreciate the policy of the 
nephew, it is only necessary to consider the conduct and character of 
the uncle. 44 Est il un homme au monde, qui voulut jamais s’en 
reposer sur la parole de Buonaparte ? N’est-ce pas un point de sa 
politique, comme un des penchans de son coeur, que de faire consister 
l’habilete a tromper, a regarder la bonne foi comme une duperie, et 
comme la marque d’un esprit borne, a se jouer de la saintete des 
sermens? A-t-il tenu un seul des traites qu’il a faits avec les 
diverses puissances de 1’Europe ? C’est toujours en violant quelqu’ 
article de ces traites, et en pleine paix, qu’il a fait ses conquetes les 
plus solides.”— 'Chateaubriand. “La depouille du monde, quinze 
cens millions de revenus ne lui suffisaient pas. II n’etait occupe 
qu’d grossir son tresor, par les mesures les plus iniques.”— lb. “ Des 
rois traiteraient avec un homme, qui leur a prodigue des outrages, 
que ne supporterait pas un simple particulier?”— lb. “Buona¬ 
parte, reste maitre d’un seul village de la France, est plus a craindre 
pour l’Europe que les Bourbons avec la France jusqu’au Bhin.”— 
lb. “On sait ce qu’il en couta bientot a l’Autriche d’avoir admis 
un collegue, tel que Napoleon, dans les rangs des souverains. Con- 
vaincu, qu’elle n’avait cede qu’a la peur, on ne lui tint nul 
compte, non plus qu’a la Prusse, de cette condescendance, sur la- 
quelle on ne fesait aucun compte.”— Vreede, p. 58. “II n’y a pas 
un Prince regnant sur le Continent, qui n’ait vu do ses propres yeux, 



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173 


ou qui ne saclie de bonne source, ce cju’il a fallu d’efforts et de dots 
de sang, pour renverser ‘ 1’edifice monstrueux compris sous la 
denomination d’Empire Francais; edifice fonde sur les ruines d’etats 
jadis independans et lieureux, et agrandi par des provinces arra- 
chees a d’antiques monarchies” ( Declaration des Puissances Allies ).— 
lb., p. 51. “Qu’etait ce que l’Allemagne, morcele par la Con¬ 
federation du Ellin, et entrainee dans toutes les guerres de 1’Empire 
Francais? Qu’etait ce que le royaume de Westplialie, et le Duche 
de Varsovie, formes, l’un et 1’autre, des debris de conquetes colos- 
sales? Qu’etait ce que Naples sous les rois Joseph et Murat? et 
puis, que signifiaient ces Duches grands fiefs hereditaires, la Dal- 
matie, l’Istrie, le Erioul—ces principautes de Neuchatel, de Bene- 
vent, et de Monte Corvo? Cette vaste domination Napoleonienne 
n’etait-ce point une ironie sanglante de lui donner l’apparence 
modeste d’un systeme federatif, quand tout tremblait sous ses lois, 
depuis les Colonnes d’Hercule jusqu’au Caucase?”— lb., p. 47. “II 
avait pris pour maxime, que toute guerre doit payer ses frais. II 
faisait vivre ses armees aux depens du pays ennemi, et il ne s’en 
cachait pas; puis, lorsque la victoire avait mis ses adversaires a sa 
merci, il avait soin de leur faire acheter la paix au prix de fortes 
contributions de guerre.”— Molinari , p. 163. “ M. d’lvernois a fait 

nn calcul approximate des ressources que les recettes exterieures ont 
procurees au tresor de 1’Empire pendant la periode florissante de 
1806 a 1810. Il arrive a un total de 4,700 millions.”— lb., p. 169. 
Napoleon ne se bornait pas a demander a l’etranger les ressources 
neeessaires pour alimenter son systeme de guerre; il lui demandait 
aussi des soldats. L’Allemagne et l’ltalie lui fournissaient regu- 
lierement des subsides en hommes, et ces subsides vivans il ne les 
menageait point.”— lb. p. 174. 

“M. Thiers denounces six conspicuous errors in the political con¬ 
duct of his hero. The rupture of the Peace of Amiens; the attempt 
to establish a universal monarchy after defeating the three Great 
Powers of the Continent; the Treaty of Tilsit; the seizure of Spain; 
the invasion of Eussia; and the refusal of the Austrian offers at 
Prague, in 1813—such were undoubtedly the main causes of his 
overthrow. In all these cases, his imprudence was suggested by 
unjust ambition, and the dethronement of the Spanish Bourbons 
involved one of the basest of crimes. 

“ If the Emperor had continued to bind fortune to the wheels of 


174 


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liis chariot, one attendant at least on his triumph would never have 
interrupted its progress by the utterance of the gentlest remon¬ 
strance. Against the ambition, which overran the Continent, striking 
down Austria, Prussia, and Pussia in quick succession, M. Thiers 
has nothing to say. The earliest hint of moral criticism, which is to 
be found in his work, faintly refers to the imprudence, rather than 
to the shameless perfidy, of Napoleon’s ill-omened plot against 
Spain. 

‘ 1 After the commencement of his decline, the historian is liberal 
in his admission of political errors, which darken into moral delin¬ 
quencies as they tend to the destruction of the Empire .”—Saturday 

Review. 

We may apply with perfect truth to M. Thiers’s history of the first 
Bonaparte the remarks; which my late admirable friend Dr. M c rie, 
the ablest and most eloquent of our Scottish biographers, addressed 
to Sir Walter Scott in reference to his encomiums upon Claverhouse. 
He felt “ that he was performing a sacred duty to the cause of truth, 
humanity, and public good, in exposing such a flagrant attempt to 
recommend a character, which deserves almost unqualified detesta¬ 
tion. We must condemn the bad tendencies of a practice, which has 
of late become too general among our popular writers, who exert all 
their eloquence to exalt the military character above every other, 
to invest it with the highest qualities, and to throw such a dazzling 
glare over the display of personal valour and martial abilities, as to 
conceal the cruelties with which it is accompanied, and in a great 
measure to reconcile the mind to it even when it is employed to 
enslave mankind, and to rear and uphold the empire of despotism and 
tyranny .”—Miscellaneous Writings , p. 319. “ We complain, that, in 

the representations given of him, his vices are shaded, and his 
excesses diminished, with the most glaring partiality. We complain, 
that excuses are made for his conduct, to which he had no claim, or 
which ought to have been urged in aggravation, and not in 
extenuation, of his guilt. We complain, that his good qualities are 
industriously brought forward and unduly blazoned, and that others 
are ascribed to him, which he did not possess; and we complain, that, 
by these means, a bloody, unrelenting, and remorseless persecutor, 
and one of the most active and unprincipled supporters of arbitrary 
and despotic power, is exhibited in such flattering colours as to 
attract admiration to a character, which, had its features been 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


175 


delineated with, the pencil of truth, would have excited little else 
than feelings of indignation and horror.”— II. p. 314 . 

“The simple explanation of Bonaparte’s ruin was, that he 
asserted the incompatibility of any other power with his own; he 
aimed at universal empire, and made himself the common assailant 
of every nationality and of every throne. 

“ In this struggle the French people evinced but little sympathy 
for their Emperor, who had in fact trampled on their liberties and 
ruled with the sole object of promoting his own personal ends. His 
soldiers were his principal friends, but even to these he was ungrate¬ 
ful, for when Paris was delivered up to the allies, after an heroic 
struggle in its defence by the military, Bonaparte was enraged with 
the general, who commanded the troops there, for not fighting to the 
last man, although the general himself had displayed the utmost 
bravery, and incurred an extraordinary amount of peril during the 
contest, and only yielded at last, because of the small number of his 
troops and the want of sympathy on the part of the Parisians. 

“The lesson of Bonaparte’s life is this : to show us what can be 
attempted and achieved by the force of a splendid intellect without 
conscience. With good opportunities, vast power, and devoted fol¬ 
lowers—if he had given himself to the welfare of France, that 
country might have blessed him above all the sages and benefactors, 
who have brightened this earth with their presence. But he set 
himself with resolute persistency and evil energy not to be this. 
He openly confessed, that neither morality nor truth were required 
or allowed in his political system. He lifted himself to the loftiest 
pinnacle of glory and success by intellectual means alone, treading 
underneath, the first principles of human justice and human sym¬ 
pathy. This was his experiment, performed upon a scale at once 
colossal and superb. For a time it was successful; but what was 
the result ? It came to no result whatever, and passed away like 
the smoke of his own artillery, leaving no trace behind it. After 
eighteen years of victory and empire, Bonaparte—who seemed to 
believe, that he had built his throne for ever, and that he had made 
this solid planet a pedestal for his feet—found, that he was an object 
of derision to Europe, and that he had nothing to stand upon but 
his own shoes. Who (the lecturer asked) can wonder at this 
collapse and degradation ? Bonaparte believed, that he could 
dispense with every moral principle, and yet conquer the whole 



176 


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civilised world, and remain its master. But although this vain and 
diabolical idea was almost realized, the true laws of God caught 
their despiser in their last retributive embrace, pulled him down 
from his seat of power, and left him a ruined political impostor and 
a broken-hearted man.”— Daniel's Lecture. 

“ There is a peculiarly dramatic interest attached to the final 
struggle of the Great War. It was the catastrophe of the great 
Napoleonic drama, when fortune deserted her spoiled child and left 
him to receive the punishment due for outraging justice and 
humanity. ” —Saturday Review. 

“ Napoleon had no support except in the army, and could only 
hope by one or two brilliant victories to rekindle in the country the 
enthusiasm, which had been completely quenched by disaster and 
suffering. He had to regain the feeling of Prance before he could 
compel extraordinary sacrifices.”— II. 

“In other battles, much larger numbers have been engaged, and 
with much greater slaughter, but Waterloo was pre-eminently a 
decisive battle. It dispelled the dream of French supremacy, and it 
signally avenged the wrongs and the insults of twenty years of 
relentless tyranny on the continent of Europe.”— II. 

It appears to me, that France has cause to be ashamed of her 
victories, and thankful for her defeats, whilst, under the terrible and 
tyrannous tricolor, she sacrificed much blood and treasure to fill up, 
if it had been possible, the fearful and fathomless abyss of Corsican 
avarice and ambition. Her successes occasioned the subjugation 
and spoliation of other unoffending nations, and rivetted more 
closely the fetters of her own galling and grinding despotism. Her 
discomfitures not only liberated other peoples from an ignominious 
and intolerable yoke, but led to her own emancipation from a thral¬ 
dom by which she was impoverished, depopulated, and debased. 

These details may be regarded as a key or clue to the prin¬ 
ciples and policy of the Man of December. “ L’Empereur n’est 
plus; mais son esprit n’est pas mort. Prive de la possibilite de 
defendre par les armes son pouvoir tutelaire, je puis au moins 
essayer de defendre sa memoire par des ecrits.” “ L’idee Napo- 
leonienne a jailli du tombeau de St. Helene, de meme que la morale 
de l'Evangile s'est elevee triomphante, malgre du Calvaire !" “A nous, 
qui cherchions, et qui errions aussi, un chemin, un guide nous est 
apparu. Ce guide e’est l’homme extraordinaire qui, second Josue, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 177 

arreta la lumiere, et fit reculer les tenebres. Ce chemin, c’est lo 
sillon, qu’ il creusa d’un bout du monde a 1’autre, et qui doit ap- 
porter la fertility et l’abondance.” And it is on the author of these 
blasphemous ravings that the Garter was conferred by the ministers 
of a British Queen ! “ II ne fut pas agresseur; au contraire, il fut 

sans cesse oblige de repousser les coalitions de 1’Europe,” coalitions 
rendered necessary for self-defence by his rampant and rapacious 
thirst for carnage and confiscation. “Je represente devant vous 
un principe, une cause, une clefaite. Le principe, c’est la souver- 
ainte du peuple—la cause, celle de l’Empire—la defaite, Waterloo. 
Le principe vous l’avez reconnu; la cause vous l’avez servi— la 
defaite , vous voule% la venger —non il n’y a pas de desaccord entre 
vous et moi.” “ Toutes nos guerres sont venues d’Angleterre.” 
“ Soldats ! la grande ombre de l’Empereur Napoleon vous parle 
par ma voix—Hatez vous, pendant qu’elle traverse 1’ocean, do 
renvoyer les traitres et les oppresseurs—montrez lui a son arrivee, 
que vous etes les dignes fils de la grande armee, et que vous avez 
repris ces emblemes sacres, qui, pendant 40 ans, out fait trembler 
les ennemis de la Erance, parini lesquels etaient ceux qui vous 
gouvernent aujourd’hui. ’ ’ 

That all sovereigns and statesmen should not have at once entered 
a solemn and simultaneous protest against the elevation of an adven¬ 
turer, who had thus openly and outrageously promulgated such 
designs and such desires, affords a strange and humiliating proof of 
the low state of moral feeling and political principle, to which the 
thrones and cabinets of Europe were, at this crisis, unhappily reduced. 
His chief object (as has been already stated) has been to sow the 
seeds of mutual suspicion and jealousy amongst the Powers, whose 
duty and interest required, that they should have united for pro¬ 
moting their common safety against a common danger. 

So far as regards aggressive and ambitious expeditions, it may be 
said of the Decemberist dynasty:— 

D’un bout du monde a l’autre elle etend son Empire. 

Voltaire. 

An Empire, however, with respect to which it cannot be added, 
that— 

Farmi ses citoycns chacun voudrait s’inscrire. 

Voltaire. 


M 


178 


OUGHT EEANCE TO WOESHIP TIIE BONAPAETES ? 


“The illustrious Montalembert was among the most useful abet¬ 
tors of tlio earlier steps by which, the Prince President, then the 
favourite of a free Church, stole up the slippery path to Empire.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“ He has been reduced to thank heaven, that he, a Frenchman, is 
occasionally permitted to breathe a little of the pure air of liberty in 
Belgium. Nor can the retrospect of the history of the Church in his 
days be more satisfactory to him. He has lived to see the Church 
prostrate itself at the foot of the man who has, as he thinks, 

ENSLAVED, DEGEADED, AND DEMOEALIZED FeANCE.”— lb. 

“ He speaks of a revolution evoked now as a scarecrow, then as 
an accomplice, to enchain public liberty ; that liberty suppressed, not 
with the brutal frankness of the Sultans, but with the sly hypocrisy 
of the Caesars, which avows not , and even forbids , the avowal of the reality 
of despotism ; finally, the dictatorship exercised in the name of the 
multitude, declared sovereign, and paying with its liberty the price 
of its derisive sovereignty—mistress for a day, a slave upon the 
morrow, and for centuries thereafter.” 

The multitude, though chiefly coerced by his bullets, was partly 
seduced by his blandishments. They soon, however, were convinced 
of their mistake— 

A peine ils l’ont choisi, qu’ils craignent leur ouvrage (Racine)— 
and were taught, by bitter and humilating experience, that— 

Tout flatteur, 

Yit au depens de celui qui l’ecouter 
Cette le?on vaut bien la liberte sans doute. 

La Fontaine. 

And this most honest and accomplished “ abettor ”— 

Honteux et confus, 

Jura—mais un peu tard—qu’on ne l’y prendrait plus. 

La Fontaine. 

All the promises and professions were, at once, falsified or for¬ 
gotten— 

Le masque tombe (Rousseau)— 

but unhappily— 

L'homne reste — 

to be the scourge, not only of Europe, but of the whole civilised 
and ?m-civilised world* 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE 130NAPARTES ? 


179 


“ It is instructive to observe wliat a store of expedients lie has laid 
up for enlarging, whenever opportunity offers, the territories of 
France.’’— Saturday Review. 

u The weakness of Austria and the strength of France are almost 
equally causes of danger to Europe.”— Times. 

11 France has a vested interest in the weakness of all her neigh¬ 
bours. She cannot feel secure or great, unless she is surrounded by 
an admiring ring of petty principalities.”— Saturday Review. 

“ It is of no use to him to disavow his pamphleteers, if one of them 
has written a marplot pamphlet without authority. Nobody would 
give the slightest credit to the disavowal. All the world knows, that 
that is a necessary part of the ceremony. Even if he proceeds to 
prohibit the obnoxious work, still he produces no effect upon the 
derisive scepticism of Europe.”— lb. 

“ No addition to the strength or prosperity of surrounding 
nations is to be allowed without compensation to France; resistance 
to professedly unprincipled rapacity becomes a general duty.”— 
Times. 

“We may well be on the verge of a war scarcely less destructive 
than that which is raging in the other hemisphere. No lasting 
peace is possible, if the principles preached in those [Bonapartist] 
articles are to shape the policy of any European Government. The 
particular case upon which they have arisen is trivial in compa¬ 
rison to the extent of the confusion they will produce.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“As regards the fermentation of Hungarian discontent by foreign 
intrigues , it does not seem, that it is at present to be apprehended. 
At the time that a Garibaldian expedition to Hungary was expected, 
French agents ivere undoubtedly very active in this country , and there 
was then, perhaps, a disposition to listen to them, but that dis¬ 
position lias since died away. French agents have lately been busy in 
some parts of the Austrian dominions —we know, that they were so 
recently in Croatia, and probably they are so now in Dalmatia—but 
in general they have been looked upon with distrust, and in 
Hungary I doubt their having produced an effect. The Hungarians 
are not, as the Italians were, courting foreign help. They do not 
covet an intervention , which might end by making their condition almost as 
bad as the one it had helped them to change. The degree of confidence 
they can repose in the French Government is measured to them by 

M 2 


180 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


the tactics of its agents in Croatia, who have done their best to 'promote 
discord between that country and Hungary. Some of tlie Hungarian 
papers express a well-pleased conviction, that the British Government 
is at last opening its eyes to the foreign intrigues, that are being 
carried on in certain Danubian districts, and especially in Southern 
Slavonia, as well as in Dalmatia.”— Times. 

The state of the public mind in Britain upon this subject is most 
anomalous, and most discouraging; but it is admitted, that there is a 
necessity for adopting the most extraordinary and expensive pre¬ 
cautions against the Man of December’s selfish and sinister ambition, 
and that no censure can with justice be directed against the powerful 
and patriotic party in France, by which he is detested and dis¬ 
trusted. 

The enemies of the Imperial Government in France had long 
made it a reproach against the English, that they were joining 

IN CLOSE ALLIANCE WITH THE MIDNIGHT DESTROYERS OF LAW AND 


freedom .“Surely these men wrong you, who call you a 

proud people. Pride causes men to stand aloof \ as we do, from what 
is base .You suffer him to drag you down into close inter¬ 


course with persons, whom the humblest of us here decline to know. 
.... To have brought you down to this, is a great achievement ; 
the realisation of what they call here a Napoleonic idea. The 

prisoner of St. Helena is avenged at last.We hear that you 

are well pleased with the prospect of all this, and that, far from 
shrinking, your ‘virtuous middle-class,’ as you call it, is going 
into a state of coarse rapture. For shame !”— Kinylahe ii. 22. 

“ Thirty millions a year are we now paying, because, on the Continent 
of Europe, one nation of immense martial energy, great pride, and great 
ambition, possesses an uncertainty of temper, which has often caused it to 
abandon the pursuits of peace, and turn its arms against ourselves or one 
of our neighbours .”— Times. 

“If there be still a powerful party in France which distrusts him, 
and obstinately refuses to discern any difference in spirit between 
the First and Second Empire, we do not blame them.”— lb. 

And yet, strange to say, the very same high authority assures us, 
and with too much truth, that he enjoys in this country a large 
share of popularity and esteem. 





OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


181 


“At tlie present moment, moreover, there is no sovereign in 
Europe so popular among us as the Emperor of the French!! 
There is no class of English politicians, who would not feel any 
personal misfortune to him as a most deplorable event!!! We 
criticise with the freedom, which is our birthright, the Italian policy 
of Napoleon III., and we have our own opinions as to many things 
in the system of government in France. But we should one and all 
hear with sorrow of any successful attempt against the position of 
the present Emperor, and with indignation of any outrage upon his 
person. ’ ’— Times. 

“Perhaps this alone may sufficiently account for a certain uneasy 
feeling, which has been felt rather than talked about in French 
society, which has found an expression in the correspondence of some 
of our English journals, and which, although we have hesitated to 
give it publicity and importance, certainly does exist. It may be 
nothing—we hope it is nothing; it may be the lightly aroused 
suspicion of the French police; it may be a rumour industriously 
spread to act as a threat. But, whatever may be its substance, the 
fame of some hostile designs against the present dynasty in France 
is disquieting the minds of those, who wish well to the cause of order 
and peace !!! ”— lb. 

“ Whatever may be our opinion upon the manner in which Napo¬ 
leon III. grasped the reins of imperial power, whatever we may 
think of the rigour of his internal administration, and of the vacilla¬ 
tion or subtlety of his foreign policy, we cannot deny, that he has 
scrupulously fulfilled his obligations to this country, and seemingly 
studied not merely to preserve an entente cordiale, but to indicate a 
unity of interest. He may, in so doing, have but followed the bent 
of his own purposes, or thought only of aggrandising his own people 
and empire ; the result is still the same.”— Liberal Paper. 

The following remark is peculiarly applicable to the preceding 
extracts :—“ It is undignified and imprudent to bluster, but it is still 
more dangerous, and far more degrading, to cringe.”— Saturday 
Review. 

In other quarters, however (and sometimes even in the same), 
the insecurity and instability of our political relations with the Man 
of December are clearly seen, and candidly acknowledged 

“We must be permitted, moreover, to consider it an advantage to 


182 OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

have once more escaped the danger of an entangling diplomatic 
association with the Emperor of the French. The experience of the 
last two years—the Mexican expedition, and French policy in Italy, 
among foreign matters, and the necessity of fortifications and a 
war budget at home—are not to be ignored. We cannot trust 
Napoleon III. We wish to live in peace and friendship with 
everybody; but we are a frank and consistent people, and the less 
we have to do with ‘ inscrutable ’ potentates, the letter.”—Saturday 
Review. 

“We are confessing year after year, in the midst of all this 
prosperity, by vast expenses on fortifications, that even our own 
fields are not secure from the danger of devastation. We acknow¬ 
ledge, by the constant maintenance of a large army and a vast navy, 
that we are in danger of this artificial disturbance of our happiness, 
and that it needs constant care to keep it away.”— Times. 

“Referring to his recent visit to Paris, he pledged his word that 
the Emperor Napoleon, though he seemed now to have changed his 
mind, had authorised him to say in that House, that he had in¬ 
structed Baron Gros to propose negotiations to the English Govern¬ 
ment. The Emperor further said, that he desired in all things, and 
chiefly with regard to America, to act in unison with England.”— II. 

“ It is worthy of notice, that , on all the great questions of the day, the 
French and English Governments seem to he totally at variance. On the 
question of Italy, it is well known, that the two Cabinets entertain 
diametrically opposite views, and that they are engaged in an as yet 
amicable contest for influence in the Peninsula, which sheds a tone 
of acerbity over all their relations. In the Mexican affair, the French 
think, and not without reason, that they have not been fairly dealt 
with by England (?), and with regard to America, England seems to 
oppose as determined a non possumus as the Pope himself, to all the 
proposals of the French Emperor to join him in an attempt to put an 
end to the barren conflict between North and South. The Emperor 
has arrived at the conclusion, that the Southern States have fully 
established their claim to be considered an independent nation, a 
conclusion which is that of all Englishmen, save perhaps two, or at 
the utmost, three members of the Cabinet. This entire absence of 
a good understanding is fraught with serious consequence for 
Europe .”—Speech of an 1IP. 

may here, however, remark, that he kept faith, and cultivated 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


183 


friendship with Italy, until he contrived to extort from it Nice 
and Savoy; and whilst apparently on the best terms with the kings 
of Belgium and Prussia, his emissaries were secretly endeavouring, 
by intrigue or intimidation, to extend, at their expense, the bounda¬ 
ries of his own dominions. 

“In 1853, some of our countrymen were beginning to perceive 
that the restoration of a Bonapartist empire in Prance, would bring 
back with it the traditions and the predatory schemes of the first 
N apoleon. ’ ’— Kinglake. 

“ There was a time when it seemed not unlikely that Prance and 
England might have entered on the same career, and pursued similar 
ends, under the shade of similar institutions. But that time has 
long passed by, and, whether for good or for evil, it appears quite 
certain that advancing time brings with it only an increase of 
strongly marked national distinctions between Prance and England. 
North of the Channel all is liberty—south of it all authority; pub¬ 
licity on this side, secrecy on that; here the sway of the law, there 
of the sword; here primogeniture, there equal division of properties; 
here free trade, there prohibition—as remedies for the evils of the 
poor, here emigration, there Socialism.— Times. 

“Prance and England have been allies for the last seven years. 
The Sovereigns of the respective countries have exchanged visits ; 
courtesies have been reciprocated between the Governments and 
the nations ; repeated assurances of the warmest friendship have 
been heard on both sides; and a commercial treaty crowns the 
whole. Never were two Governments to all appearance more 
closely allied. Is all this of such little value, that it should be now 
felt necessary to recommend a good understanding with this 
country ? Is it expected that England will go down on her 
knees, and, ‘with bated breath and whispering humbleness,’ bind 
herself to be utterly silent about the dismemberment of allies and 
the annexation of their territory ; to build not a single ship, wooden 
or iron, even were the Prencli navy increased to double its present 
force; and to disband the Volunteers forthwith? It is not alleged 
that England has done anything to disturb the friendly relations 
contracted years ago. It is not affirmed that, as respects Nice and 
Savoy and the naval armaments, systematic deception has not been 
practised by the Prench Government, and may not again in the 
case of Sardinia.”— Ib> 


184 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TOE BONARARTES ? 


The pusillanimous incongruity of our conduct towards the weak 
and the powerful, reflects disgrace upon our statesmen of all classes 
and parties. 

‘ 1 Except in theory, potentates of different ranks are seldom 
regarded as strictly equal in the eyes of international law.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“ England had no ground of war against Ferdinand of Naples ; 
but his Government was thought too disreputable to associate with , and so 
we diplomatically cut him. Perhaps, to be perfectly consistent, we 

OUGHT TO HAVE CUT ONE OR TWO OTHER GOVERNMENTS AT THE 

same time. But neither nations nor individuals are always per¬ 
fectly consistent. Men have, before now, been known to tolerate 
conduct in a duke, for which they would certainly have cut a neigh¬ 
bour of their own rank.”— lb. 

In Mr. Kinglake’s late admirable work, it is demonstrated, that we 
were drifted into an unnecessary and unprofitable war to give 
stability and prestige to the Imperial usurpation, “ so as to meet 
the personal exigencies of the Emperor of the French and the 
accomplices of his usurpation, who were under the necessity of 
indemnifying the French people for the suppression of its liberties 
at home by some signal achievement abroad—of obtaining a moral 
sanction, such as that of the Queen of England, for their question¬ 
able acts and tainted characters—and of placing some events of 
absorbing interest as a screen between themselves and the memory 
of the civil blood which they had shed.” 

“ In the west there had been seen a knot of men possessed for the 
time of the mighty engine of the French states, and striving so to 
use it as to be able to keep their hold, and to shelter themselves 
from a cruel fate. The volitions of these men were active enough, 
because they were toiling for their lives. Their efforts seemed to 
interest and to please the lustiest man of those days,*' for he watched 
them for ever with approving smile , and began to declare, in his good 
humoured boisterous way, that, so long as they should be suffered to 
have the handling of France, so long as they would execute for him 
his policy, so long as they would take care not to deceive him, they 
ought to be encouraged, they ought to be made use of, they ought 


* The British Prime Minister. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


185 


to have the shelter they wanted—and, the Frenchmen agreeing to 
his conditions, he was willing to level the barrier— he called it 
perhaps false pride—which divided the Government of the Queen 
from the venturers of the 2nd December. In this thought, at the 
moment, nE stood almost alone j but he abided his time.”— King- 
lake, I. 494. 

I have already observed, that our jaunty, jocular, and juvenile 
Prime Minister (born 1784), was probably the solitary and signifi¬ 
cant exception to the rule, that Englishmen viewed with unanimous 
and unqualified abhorrence the carnage and the cruelties of the 
2nd December. 

Lord Palmerston “ spurned the whole invention of the French 
republic; but iiis favourite hatred of all was his hatred of the 
House of Bourbon. In short, by the 1st of December, 1851, though 
still at the Foreign Office, he had become isolated in Europe. But 
fortune smiles on bold men. The next night, Prince Louis Bona¬ 
parte and his fellow venturers destroyed the French republic, super¬ 
seded the Bourbons, and suppressed France. Plainly, this 
prince and Lord Palmerston were men who could act together 
-—could act together, until the Prince should advise himself to 
deceive the English Minister.”— Kinglake , I. 446. 

“Desiring to have the Governments of France and England 
united together for an English object, desiring to prevent a revival 
of the French republic, and, above all, to prevent the restora¬ 
tion of the House of Bourbon, he was only too glad to be able 
to strengthen the new Emperor’s hold upon France, by exalting 
his personal station, and giving him the support of a close, separate, 
and published alliance with the Queen of England.”— II. 447. 

‘ ‘ Half of the stability, real or apparent, of the present French 
Empire, is based on the European estimate of the English Alliance 5 
and the visit of Napoleon III. to Windsor Castle, whatever it might 
have been for England, was a pledge to Christendom of his recep¬ 
tion into the family, which is a different thing from the congress, 
of nations .”—Saturday Review. 

Lord Palmerston, therefore, instigated by his “ favourite hatred,” 
lent a helping hand to the infliction, 1st, of galling slavery upon 
France; 2nd, of needless bloodshed, and wasteful expenditure upon 
England; 3rd, of distrust and anxiety upon Europe, by breaking 


186 


OUGHT FltANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


up the treaties, which had for many years ensured its prosperity 
and its peace. 

“In France, after the events of the 2nd December, the system of 
personal good so firmly obtained, that the narrator, dispensed from the 
labour of inquiring what interests she had in the question of peace 
and war, and what were the thoughts of her orators, her statesmen, 
and her once illustrious writers, was content to see what scheme of 
action would best conduce to the welfare and safety of a small knot 
of men then hanging together in Paris; and when it appeared, upon 
the whole, these persons would gain in safety and comfort from the 
disturbance of Europe, and from a close understanding with Eng¬ 
land, the subsequent progress of the story was singularly unembar¬ 
rassed by any questions about what might be the policy demanded 
by the interests or sentiments of France.”— Kinglake , I. 470. 

‘ * France had become a nation of helots; her literature trampled 
upon, her best citizens massacred, driven into exile, or transported 
to the pestilential swamps of Cayenne, her press gagged, her states¬ 
men proscribed, her bravest, most virtuous and patriotic generals 
driven as outcasts from the land for which they bled ; and the whole 
country so entrapped and entangled in a network woven by unprin¬ 
cipled adventurers and their allies, the Jesuits, that there was no 
possible outlet for escape. In short, we found terror the only law 
acknowledged in the land, each man suspicious of his fellow, afraid 
to speak what his heart was bursting to tell; and worst of all, a 
government composed of Jesuits and money-lenders, stock-jobbers 
and gamblers, place-hunters and military adventurers, who appeared 
to have seized the country with a view of making it a profitable 
speculation, so long as they could hold the reins of power.”— Con¬ 
servative Paper. 

“ At the close of 1851, the France known to Europe and the world 
was bereaved of political life, and thenceforth her complex interests 
in the affairs of nations, were effectually overruled by the exigency 
of personal considerations.”— Kinglalce, I. 633. 

“Partnership with the midnight associates of the 2nd December 
was a heavy yoke.” — Ik. 338 

“Tranquillity to Europe could not fail to bring him and his 
December friends into jeopardy.”— Ik. 339. 

“ If he looked to the future, as designed for him by the Constitu¬ 
tion, he could see nothing but the prospect of having to step down 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


187 


on a day already fixed, and descend from a conspicuous situation 
into poverty and darkness. For this reason Persigny was his abettor 
and accomplice.”— Kinglake , I., 225. 

Tbe mischievous meddlesomeness of the Foreign Minister has 
also involved us in untoward and unprofitable negociations with 
Pussia, which, through confidential fellowship with the Man of 
December, may possibly involve us (as on a former occasion) in 
unwise and expensive hostilities, through which he would contrive, 
as before, amidst profuse and plausible professions of fidelity and 
disinterestedness, to gain all the advantage, to control and coerce our 
procedure, and ultimately out-wit and abandon us. Under this 
pretence, he is preparing immense armaments, which may, ere long, 
be directed against our allies (if, indeed, we have any remaining), 
or, perhaps, against ourselves. Those two eminent statesmen, Earl 
Grey and the Earl of Derby, as well as the all-powerful leading 
journal, have rendered a most essential service to the nation, by 
warning it against the freaks and follies of Her Majesty’s present 
advisers. 

“The number of guns ordered to be prepared is variously esti¬ 
mated ; the highest account puts them at 44 batteries; and, as each 
battery is composed of six pieces, we have a total of 284 guns. If I 
am not mistaken, the rate in the French army is two guns for every 
thousand men; and 264 would suppose an army of about 130,000. 
It is not strange that an order of the kind, appearing at the moment 
when the Polish question possesses so much interest, should make 
people apprehensive that France is about to enter on a great war.” 
— Times. 

“I am persuaded, that, if the question were put distinctly to Her 
Majesty’s Ministers, to Parliament, and to the nation, ‘Will you, 
or will you not go to war on behalf of Poland ? ’ the answer would 
on the part of each be, ‘No.’ Although I believe, that there is a 
general concurrence of opinion, that every person in this country is 
convinced, that it is not a case in which it is lawful to go to war, 
still, I cannot read the papers which have been laid upon the table, 
without feeling great alarm, lest, while we do not intend to go to 
war, gradually, and step by step, we may be led to that most awful 
conclusion. I believe, that that is a danger at this moment of a most 
serious character, and I believe it can only be averted by this country 


188 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


acting upon a clear and well-understood line of policy. Poland must 
not expect any armed interference for tlie re-establishment of her 
liberties. I say, that if Her Majesty’s Government think it consistent 
with their duty to make that statement in the present state of affairs, 
I can have no hesitation in declaring my entire concurrence in that 
declaration, and my conviction, moreover, that it is the deliberate 
determination of this country, that they will not willingly and know¬ 
ingly be brought into hostilities for the purpose of maintaining the 
liberties of Poland.” 

‘ ‘ It is not a very promising position for the noble Earl to start 
with propositions, when the parties, whom he wishes to serve, are 
unwilling to be bound by the terms which he offers.” 

“Should these overtures be rejected, what is our position? We 
are acting in concert with Prance, but with different views and 
different interests. We both wish to save Poland, but there the 
agreement between us necessarily ends. We have no wish to recon¬ 
quer, or to see France reconquer, the frontier of the Phine; no desire 
to take advantage of the present weakness of Prussia, caused by the 
infatuated folly of her King and his Ministers; no wish to overthrow 
the balance of European power, by humbling or crippling Pussia. 
We have nothing to gain by war; we have every reason to wish for 
peace.”— Times. 

11 The conditions of common action may be determined in advance. 
France has only brought about the action of Europe in the interest 
of Europe, inspired solely by the sentiment of justice and the interest of 
European order. She has no reserved intentions , no ambitious calcula¬ 
tions , in which diplomacy is necessary. (!!!) “On the contrary, 
France only desires, that the immutable will of the Powers shall be 
distinctly seen behind the efforts of diplomacy. An understanding 
between them once assured, there would be no war. In every step, 
every effort in favour of Poland, France has been actuated solely 
by a desire to restore to itself an unfortunate and heroic nationality, 
to cause what every Cabinet has acknowledged intolerable, to cease 
—the state of things unfortunately bequeathed to us by the past, 
and which we do not wish to transmit to the future. In order to 
attain the object in view, it is necessary to hold as far aloof from 
violence and insult as from weakness. The best policy is sagacious 
firmness.”— Man of December. 

The trustworthiness of this declaration may be put on a level with 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


189 


tliat of the telegraphic announcement on the 2nd December, 1851, 
when all the greatest men in France had been insulted and incar¬ 
cerated, that “the President maintained the republic.” 

“We have repeatedly expressed our conviction that, come what 
may of our proposals, this country has never seriously entertained 
the idea of going to war for the sake of Poland; and we have reason 
to believe, notwithstanding some loud talking and violent writing, 
that the same thing is true with regard to the great mass of public 
opinion in France. We seem to have made a demand , which we do not 
expect to obtain , in order to receive a rebuff) which we do not intend to 
resent. To our minds, the position we appear to have chosen for 
ourselves, is neither agreeable nor dignified.”— Scots Liberal Taper. 

“ The Powers must, one would think, have had, in the proposal 
which they made, one of three objects in view. They must either 
have meant to satisfy Poland, to satisfy Bussia, or to satisfy both 
Poland and Bussia. It is only too clear, that the policy we propose 
will not attain any one of these objects.” 

We are told of “the look which used to show that Lord Baglan 
was feeling the stress of the French alliance, and dissembling the pain 
of his anger” ( Kinglahe , II. 497); and that, “ except on grounds of 
paramount importance, he had no right to break through the fetters 
bg which his Queen’s Government had thought fit to bind their country ” 
{Lb. 500). 

“ Lord Grey very justly remarks, that, ten years ago, we were 
placed in a position towards Bussia very like the present, and that 
everybody said war was impossible. Yet it came. The English did 
not believe, that Bussia would resist, the Czar did not believe, that 
England would attack, and, after months of misunderstanding, the 
interests and pride of both Governments were so much engaged, that 
neither could draw back. May we not now be marching on the 
same easy and dangerous road ? As if but to assert the fashionable 
Liberalism of the time, our Government has demanded of a great 
Sovereign concessions, which both his interest and his judgment 
will probably lead him to refuse.”— Times. 

“Earl Grey forcibly showed the risks attaching to our present 
attitude towards Bussia; and Earl Russell was not quite successful in 
showing that diplomatically there was no danger of war—Scots Literal 
Taper. 

“We confess candidly, that we cannot look upon our present posi- 


190 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


tion in Europe without some uneasiness. We are neither pledged 
to actual intervention in Poland, nor are we hound up in an offen¬ 
sive and defensive alliance with Prance; and yet we seem to have 
swerved somewhat from the wise and popular policy of keeping our¬ 
selves disentangled from the counsels of other States, and guiding 
ourselves by the doctrines of non-intervention.”— Times. 

Nothing could be more contrary to the principles, or at least to 
the professions, of a “ Liberal ” Ministry, than their ill-advised and 
worse-conducted interference in the affairs of Poland. 1. They have 
given just cause for complaints and estrangement to Pussia, who 
was, in better times, our sure and stedfast ally. 2. They have 
encouraged perseverance in a hopeless contest, on the part of the 
Poles, who are buoyed up by the delusive mirage of expected assist¬ 
ance, which no foreign Government seriously intended to afford. 
3. They have played into the hands of the Man of December, who 
would be glad to trepan Britain into a second conflict with Pussia, 
of which (as on a former inauspicious occasion) he would end by 
reaping the sole advantage. 4. They have failed to perceive, how 
weak and wicked a proceeding it is, to encourage a people, which has 
no settled plan, even if successful, for the organisation of a safe and 
stable Government, to resist a high-minded and united nation, which 
will never succumb either to dictation from abroad, or to revolt 
within its own dominions. 5. The Man of December’s intriguing 
machinations are the chief causes of the continuance of the contest, 
from which he hopes ultimately to secure accession of territory to 
himself, at the expense of Prussia, or otherwise. 

“I much fear that things wdiicli have been said this evening will 
not tend to remove the difficulties, under which her Majesty’s Govern¬ 
ment are now labouring. Those difficulties are entirely to be attri¬ 
buted to her Majesty’s Government having left the safe course of 
non-intervention.”— Earl of Malmesbury. 

“Earl Pussell has brought this business to an issue which is past 
all remedy.”— Liberal Paper. 

“Matters have turned out as we anticipated—that is, we have 
taken nothing wdiatever by our motion. We never believed, that a 
negotiation of the kind on which we were embarked, could lead to any 
satisfactory result. There was always a want of earnestness and 

reality about it.”— Times, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


191 


“The lesson given to Earl Russell for his gullibility on Polish 
telegrams was a well-merited one.”— Standard. 

“ The more one examines this question of war with Russia, the 
more one feels bewildered and dismayed at the complications and 
dangers that surround it.”— Times. 

“We have invited the rebuff, and there is nothing left us but to 
bear it patiently^ This is the inevitable end, to which we predicted 
that an interference, unsupported by force, was sure to conduct us.” 
—II. 

“We hope we have gone far enough, and that it will not be 
thought necessary, for the credit of this country, and the advantage 
of Poland, to plunge us deeper into negotiations, which have hitherto, 
proved so unpropitious to both.”— lb. 

“ It would be difficult to answer so irritating and humiliating a 
document in the only spirit in which, consistently with the dignity of 
England, it could be answered, without taking a great step towards 
war. It will be quite as difficult to reconcile silence under the rebuff, 
with the position which England has occupied in these negotiations. 
But it is evident that the moment for decision has come.”— Scots¬ 
man. 

“We have signally failed in this ill-conceived and ill-executed 
attempt at mediation.”— Liberal Taper. 

“It is a kind of relief to be set free from the maintenance of a 
policy that could never have done any real good, and must have 
wrought positive and lasting harm. The ‘ six points ’ policy was unjust 
to Poland, part of which it left at the mercy of the Czar; unjust to 
England, because it committed her to the tacit sanction of barbarities 
in one part of Poland, which in another had roused her to remon¬ 
strance ; unjust to Europe, since it left the question of tranquillisa- 
tion in Poland no further forward, but really farther back than it 
has been for the last fifty years. English diplomacy has been 
foiled.”— Scotsman. 

“We are aware that the principal cause of the obstinacy of the 
insurgents—an obstinacy which has ruined the country for many 
years—is to be found in their hope of support by the Western Powers. 
If they did not entertain this hope, we should have long since reduced 
this revolt.”— Prince Gortschalcoff. 

“ The language of the French and English press lias not diminished 
these encouragements, and it is on this account that we stated our 


192 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


conviction, that foreign assistance was the principal cause of the per¬ 
sistence of the insurrection.” —Prince GortschaTcoff. 

“ Neither the Emperor Francis Joseph, nor Count Bechberg, enter¬ 
tains any idea of making an attempt to compel the St. Petersburg 
Government to do what is required of it.” 

“The Emperor of the French had a'great ascendant over the 
English Government . . . He found means of putting a pressure 
upon the advisers of the Queen. . . . The yoke was pressed hard 
against her.”— Kinglalce , 362-3. 

Lord Palmerston’s countenance and connivance, in reference to 
the French ruler, were the more inexcusable and unwise, because he 
must have been aware, that the insatiable ambition and vindictive 
animosity of the Man of December, as well as the necessity of his 
position, would prompt him, at any favourable crisis, to invade 
England, and not only to insult and intimidate, but to cripple or 
conquer Europe. 

“ Sympathy for Poland means European war; our own entangle¬ 
ment in the ambitious schemes of a dynasty , the only security of which is a 
policy of aggression; a career of victory for Prance, eventuating, in all 
probability, in a peace which will crown her with no barren triumph 
—a peace which will humiliate Prussia as well as Bussia; constitute 
a Catholic kingdom in the North, which will ever be at the call of 
Napoleon; while the recollections, which were slowly dying out, will 
be revived, and France will dream anew the dream of universal empire , 
which she will have made her first great step to attain in the 
acquired boundary of the Bhine.” 

“By generating the original dispute, by drawing England from the 
common ground of the four Powers , into a separate understanding with 
himself, by causing a persistently hostile use to be made of the 
fleets ; and, finally, by his ambiguous ways of speaking and acting, 
the French Emperor came to have a chief share in the kindling of 
the war.”— Kinglahe , I. 485. 

C’est en vain que l’Anglais travaille, 

A combattre votre destin; 

Vous aurez l’huitre, et lui l’ccaille ; 

Yous arrivez le fruit et le grain, 

Et lui l’ccoroe avec la paille. 

Voltaire. 


( 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 193 

‘ 1 I^y determining’ to quit the main land of Europe, and make a 
descent upon a remote maritime province of Russia, the Western 
Powers deprived themselves of all right to expect, that Austria and 
Prussia would favour a scheme of invasion, which they did not and 
could not approve of.”— Kinglake , I. 482. 

11 He wished to say a word on the question of the French navy. 
There was a great deal going on in the French dockyards, which did 
not appear in the statements made by his noble and gallant friend. 
He had taken the trouble to ascertain the facts from an authentic 
source, and he found, that there was a large class of vessels building 
in the French dockyards ; he did not say with the present intention 
of going to war with this country—for he believed, so long as they 
could, consistently with their own objects, the French wished to keep 
at perfect peace with us—but, certainly, the vessels, to which he 
alluded, would form a most efficient means of aggression. They 
W’ere cavalry transports, vessels of great tonnage and horse power, 
admirably fitted for carrying from 300 to 400 horses each, with a 
certain number of troops in addition. At the end of this year there 
would be forty-four of those vessels ready for sea, and the intention 
was, according to the statements of the French dockyard officials, in 
a very short time to have one of those vessels named after every 
department in France. For what conceivable purpose could the 
French Government deem it necessary to go to the enormous expense 
of building this particular class of vessels, except to be prepared to 
act efficiently, if circumstances compelled them to go to war with 
this country ? They could only be utilised by an attempted invasion 
of England.”— Speech in the House of Commons. 

“English journals of all parties have discountenanced the idea 
of armed intervention, while the French journals, almost without 
exception, have urged it. The tone of the English press gives no clue 
to the secret intrigues or intentions of the Government; but that 
of the French press notoriously does so; therefore the ‘foreign 
assistance ’ of which Prince Gortschakoff speaks, must be held, by 
his reasoning, to be directly traced to the Emperor Napoleon as its 
source.” 

“Commenting upon, and fully agreeing with, these remarks, 
M. Emile de Girardin’s paper admits that there is a lively sympathy 
felt in France for the Poles, but observes that when that sympathy is 
called upon to express itself in a pecuniary form subscriptions are few 

N 


194 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

and scanty. Tlie Presse does not conceal its opinion as to the small¬ 
ness of the result that would be obtained if it were proposed that 
every able-bodied Frenchman desirous of the emancipation of 
Poland should sign an engagement to take the field as a soldier, or 
to disburse the sum necessary for the purchase of a substitute.”— 
Times. 

11 It took a long time, and much perseverance, and manoeuvring, to 
get England into that struggle (out of which so many now think she 
would have done better to have kept), and why should not French 
diplomacy be equally successful on a second occasion ? ”— lb. 

1 ‘ What France evidently desires, is that England shall take some 
step, which would certainly not be the last, and which she could not 
retrace with honour.”— lb. 

“ It cannot be denied, that the English Government at present occu¬ 
pies an embarrassing position. Neither Parliament nor the country 
in the smallest degree wishes for a war with Pussia, and yet there 
are strong reasons against allowing or compelling France to act 
alone.” 

“ The three Powers are continuing their mischievous diplomatic 
meddling. They seem bent on rendering a war altogether inevitable. 
Although Pussia has intimated, as plainly as it is in the power of 
words to convey a meaning, that she will not allow foreign powers to 
interfere in her domestic concerns, they are hard at work framing 
another elaborate series of notes, asserting their right to interfere, 
and repeating demands which Pussia has already declared she 
neither would nor could accept. And there is no doubt, from the 
turn affairs have taken, that both Austria and England are pledged 
to support France in the aggressive policy which Poland has afforded 
a plausible pretext once more to enter upon. A little common sense 
is all that is necessary to foresee what will be the end of all this. By 
continuing bootless negotiations, France makes war—for which she 
is preparing, and in the breaking out of which her ruler has a deep 
interest—a certainty, and England and Austria must be set down as 
her accomplices.”— Times. 

‘ ‘ The history of Poland is that of a race without unity, without 
even an ascertained territory, without a dynasty, without a consti¬ 
tution, without a people, except serfs and slaves, without a religion, 
without a policy, without commerce, without art and science, without 
material progress, without laws, except the Charter of Privileges 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


195 


signed by the Sovereign at liis election,—without anything, in fact, 
which is supposed to constitute a nation.”— Times. 

The rej3ly of Alexander I. to Napoleon, before the opening of 
the campaign of 1812, may well be quoted here:— 

“ If I have not a single soldier left, I will appeal to my nobility, 
which has ever distinguished itself by its fidelity to the throne; I 
will call together my peaceable villagers; I will put myself at their 
head; I will make use of all the resources of my empire, but I never 
will treat with the enemy as long as he treads on Russian soil. We 
are resolved to bury ourselves under the ruins of our empire, rather than 
treat with the Attila of modern times.” 

“We can but adhere to the observations contained in our reply 
on the subject of a suspension of hostilities. In Poland there 
are no hostilities, there is a rebellion; there are no belligerents, 
but, on the one side, rebels in arms, and, on the other hand, a 
legal Government, authorities, and a regular army.” — Russian 
State Paper. 

“Under such circumstances, the only possible transaction, is the 
restoration of order and submission of the rebels. They must either 
lay down their arms, or the Government must give up all authority.” 
—Prince Gortschakoff. 

“ The Abeille du Nord of St. Petersburgh, of the 13th inst., states, 
in its leading article, that it is certain there will be no war this year 
between Russia and the three Powers which interfered in the Polish 
question, but that, nevertheless, all possible precautions are not too 
much with such adversaries as Napoleon III. and the present Prime 
Minister of Great Britain .” 

“Prance is told to mind her own affairs, and if she means to co¬ 
operate in the restoration of order in Poland, to do so by not con¬ 
niving at the conspiracies wdiich perpetuate insurrection.” 

“An ‘interchange of views,’ an ‘exchange of sentiments,’ an 
‘ exchange of ideas ’—this is all that Russia can allow to the Powers 
on behalf of Poland, and in the interests of their own security and 
of the peace of Europe.”— Liberal Paper. 

“According to the Invalide Russe, Prince Gortschakoff’s replies to 
the notes of the three Powers have made a strong, very general, 
and highly favourable impression at Moscow, where a banquet lias 
been given, at which the proposal of the healths of the Emperor and 

n 2 


196 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


his Minister, was the signal for the most enthusiastic acclamations.” 
— Times. 

“ A writer in the Patrie , a paper which has been foremost in push¬ 
ing on a war against Russia for the independence of Poland, considers 
that some of the great Powers would fear for their own existence, in 
the event of the war becoming European.” 

“The Poles will obtain nothing, so long as the Western Powers 
arrogate to themselves the right of meddling in our affairs. Every 
Russian trembles with wrath and indignation, at the bare idea of 
foreign intervention, which insults and deeply wounds our national 
dignity. Our Government will not recoil from any sacrifice, and 
will be arrested by no obstacle, in repelling these pretensions.”— 
Russian Paper. 

“ Our flag would float over Stockholm. Winter offers us an easy 
road. The Western Powers will not come during that season to the 
succour of their imprudent ally, who has dared to dream of recon¬ 
quering provinces, lost for upwards of a century, and which have no 
sympathy with their ancient mother country.”— lb. 

“ The Russian newspapers assert that the Bernadotte dynasty is not 
yet firmly seated in Sweden, and doubts that the Swedish nation 
would consent to follow its King, in an adventurous enterprise, which 
would earn for him so deservedly the epithet of Don Quixote, be¬ 
stowed by Voltaire on Charles XII.” 

“ The reality consists of a growing, and now very threatening anta¬ 
gonism between France and Russia, which may possibly engage 
Austria in the quarrel, but which wall leave England a neutral, 
though not an unsympathetic spectator.”— Times. 

“Nothing has been gained for Poland, therefore, by the first stage 
of these negotiations. The Powers, on the other hand, are placed in 
a worse position than at the outset. Not only are their desires for 
the stoppage of bloodshed, and the removal of an European peril, 
contemptuously disregarded—they are pretty distinctly told, that 
they have no pretext for interference at all, and have only hitherto 
been listened to by the forbearance of Russia.”— lb. 

“The party of action are working incessantly, and it is well 
known, that the principal agents are in the pay of France. It is no 
secret, that the Polish insurrection was principally owing to the same 
source, and, when the movement is ripe, it will be judiciously de¬ 
veloped .”—Liberal Paper . 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


197 


u Nice and constant adjustments of rights, jurisdictions, bounda¬ 
ries, and affinities, have so elaborated our system, that a touch must 
shake all. Europe, as she exists, is a card-house of treaties and 
counter-treaties, which only the most delicate diplomacy can alter 
a hair’s-breadth without toppling down half the erection.”— 
Times. 

“If th- e map of Europe is to be re-arranged, the new boundaries 
must be written, as they have ever been written, with the point of 
the sword. This, too, is what diplomacy must end in.”— II. 

11 Although, by the most influential of the mercantile classes in 
England and France, the Polish war mania is still regarded with 
surprise, it is evident that the speculators on both sides, and espe¬ 
cially those who are supposed to have access to the Imperial Court, 
have arrived almost at a conviction, that hostilities have been resolved 
upon.”— lb. 

“Prince Gortschakoff has, no doubt, been kept well informed of 
what passes in Prance, and he knows of the military preparations, 
of the aroused expectations of the army, of the popularity of another 
campaign, with all but the monied classes.”— lb. 

“It was bad enough to insinuate that Paris was a centre of 
revolution; but it is far worse to declare that the three Powers, 
under the pretext of securing justice to Poland and peace in Europe, 
are only lending themselves to the purposes of the ‘ cosmopolite 
revolution.’ ”— Scotsman. 

‘ 1 The French Government cannot leave the matter in its present 
state; they cannot leave Prince Gortschakoff’s Note without a 
rejoinder; or accept, without further remark, the statement, that 
Paris is the real source of the Polish insurrection. The charge , in fact , 
is directed at the Imperial family'; for there can be no doubt that Prince 
Napoleon and his Polish friends are meantP — Times. 

“The insurrection would hardly last long, were the Poles once 
thoroughly persuaded, that they have no aid to expect from England 
or France. It has been kept up by the stimulus given to it from 
those two countries. French agents, French volunteers, and a 
portion of the French press, have done their utmost to encourage 
and maintain it.”— lb. 

“ Both Austria and England cling fast to their political traditions, 
and it would violate the traditions of both, if France pushed her 
frontier to the Bhine. But it is difficult to feel certain that, if 


198 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


France chose her time well, she might not be allowed practically to 
deal with Prussia alone.”— Illustrated News. 


VI .—The British Cabinet. 

When we consider the characters and principles of the ministers 
now in power (or at least in place), we see serious grounds for 
apprehension and discouragement. 

“ The Whigs enter into the composition of every Liberal Ministry, 
as a matter of political form. A certain number of Parliamentary 
politicians would think themselves socially degraded by having to 
follow a Ministry that contained no representative of the accre¬ 
dited Whig families. But, with every year, the form becomes more 
difficult to observe. Partly from defections, partly from an unac¬ 
countable failure in vigour, the great Whig houses have failed to supply 
official recruits at all comparable , in their intellectual standard , with those 
through whom the party preserved its historic renown for such a long period 
of years. The ranks have to be filled up with a dwarfed race, amiable 
and cultivated, animated by all the honesty which thorough narrow¬ 
mindedness can confer, but possessing no trace of originality or of 
mental energy. For some time past, one of the chief sources of 
weakness to all Ministries formed upon the Liberal side of the House, 
has been the traditional necessity of assigning a prominent part in 
it to the Whigs of the genuine blue blood. The present Home 
Secretary is a typical specimen of the feeble race of statesmen with 
which this conventional necessity has often filled some of the most 
important offices.”— Saturday Review. 

“ Lord Palmerston and his colleagues are in office by the permission 
of their numerous opponents. The Premier himself, no doubt, is 
personally popular. As a clever embodiment of national failings 
and weaknesses he is sure to be so—not so his colleagues! Such of 
them as are at all well known are either despised or disliked, and the 
bulk are regarded as mere respectable cyphers necessary to make up 
the sum total of a Cabinet. Earl Eussell and Mr. Gladstone are 
perhaps the only two about whom there is any interest; but the 



OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


199 


former is now generally regarded as a mischievously fidgetty little 
being, tolerably certain to do mischief unless restrained by a higher 
power, and always sure to offend any one of an equal or superior 
position with whom he may have to come in contract. As for Mr. 
Gladstone, despite all his sacrifices in order to win the smiles and 
the votes of the Manchester School, he is at the eleventh hour thrown 
aside by the Brightian organ in favour of his Conservative opponent. 
Of the rest of the Cabinet, we may say, as the beadle of St. Giles’ 
said to the paupers— 

“ What they does and how they fares 
Nobody knows and nobody cares.” 

They remind us of what Catalani’s husband said of the opera troupe 
which his wife had got up, “ Ma femme—et dome poupeesP The 
truth is, the Cabinet is Palmerston, Gladstone, and Bussell, and the 
rest are poupees. Earl Granville is the gentle poupee ; the Duke of 
Newcastle the chattering poupee ; the Duke of Somerset the quarrel¬ 
ling poupee; Sir George Grey the do-nothing poupee; Sir C. Wood 
the obstructive poupee; and so on until the list of marionettes is 
ended. Hence the whole aspect of their policy—if their way of 
tiding over danger can be thus designated—is simply that of a tacit 
compromise, the keeping-up of a decent appearance, the avoidance, 
for a time, of difficulties by evasive finesse and management.”—■ 
Liberal Paper. 

“ In the House of Commons, there is no prominent supporter of 
the Government, under the age of fifty.”— Saturday Review. 

“We are drifting to a state of things not unlike that which has 
reduced the House of Bepresentatives in America to insignificance. 
That assembly has been compelled to receive explanations of the 
policy of the Government, not from the Ministers themselves, but 
from members to whom those Ministers had explained it. They 
have consequently lost all control over the Executive, though they 
have retained the power of the purse.”— lb. 

The Palmerstons, Bussells, and Gladstones, who have so long 
crouched and cringed before the Bonapartist altar, would be the 
loudest in their professions, and the lowest in their prostrations, 
before the throne of the Bestoration. As soon as this change 
becomes their interest, they will, at once, perceive that it is their 


200 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


duty. It is tlie universal homage rendered by British utilitarianism 
and selfishness, at the glaring but guilty shrine of success, which has 
brought upon this country the distrust and contempt of the world. 

“ There is an uneasy consciousness that the House of Commons is 
not in such direct relations with the Ministry as if the chief persons 
in the Cabinet were among its members.”— Saturday Review. 

I.—Lord Palmerston. 

We have a Prime Minister, who, at seventy-eight, employed 
himself, during a recent recess, in banqueting and Blondinising at 
sundry provincial minor theatres; sometimes delighting an enthu¬ 
siastic audience, by tripping with light fantastic toe on the tight rope 
of bombast and boasting; and at other times, displaying equal dex¬ 
terity on the slack rope of blarney and buffoonery. 

“ Government schemes are so insidiously introduced and advanced, 
that we never know when we can stop them.”— Mr. Cobden. 

“The hon. member for Birmingham bluntly remarked at the 
time, ‘ There is nothing bad can be done, unless the Prime Minister 
is present.’ ”— lb. 

“ I hope, that the noble lord at the head of the Government, who 
is the person to whom I allude, will deal with the subject on its 
merits, and if, in reply to my statement, he will substitute a few 
facts and arguments for jokes and pleasantries, I shall be very much 
obliged to him.”— lb. 

“ The Pope is supported at Pome by French soldiers. The Prime 
Minister is kept upon the Treasury Bench by Conservative votes. 
Both are inclined at present to do little or nothing. Mon possumus is 
as much the motto of the Pope of Pome, as of the Minister in 
Downing Street.”— Liberal Paper. 

“Not only did the noble Lord, the other night, attempt to suppress 
discussion, but he administered to him a severe rebuke, which ho 
ventured to say was most uncalled for and most unnecessary. 
The Government had been obliged to yield to the demand which lie 
then made. He wished to know, whether it was the function of the 
Prime Minister to check free discussion, and crush independent 
members of that House.”— Mr. Roebuck. 

“With regard to the Prime Minister, he knows the ignorance and 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


201 


tlie follies of the people, and suits himself to them. That he is an 
impostor is evident enough; but to expose him, does nothing. He 
exactly suits the frothy politicians, that are so numerous among our 
countrymen. He is to the middle classes, what Feargus O’Connor 

was to the working classes—and I wish them joy of him.To 

expose a Minister, is nothing, so long as the people are a prey to the 
delusions through which he practises upon them. He is the proper 
ruler of a nation arrogant and intoxicated; and, so long as the 
present temper of the public is maintained, they have the Grovern- 
ment they most deserve, from whom the minister stooped to men- 
dicate and maintain their pelf and their places.”— Mr. Bright. 

“Mr. Kinglake dwells emphatically upon ‘the presence in the 
English Cabinet of an eminent and powerful statesman, strong in 
diplomatic experience, and in his command of all the arts and 
sources of popularity, who was from the leginning lent on a separate 
alliance with the Emperor of the French , and eager, with him as an ally, 
to deal a blow against Russia.’ He justly says, ‘that, while every 
other member of Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet would probably, if he had 
now the opportunity, undo what was then done, Lord Palmerston alone 
would do it again. It was, in fact, his doing, in conjmiction with the 
Emperor of the French. lie it was who, immediately after the elevation 
of Louis Napoleon to the Empire, hastened, drawn ly strong affinities of 
tendency and sentiment, to male him a personal confederate and ally; and 
who, for the moment, sacrificed office to that olgect. He it was who, 
when these negociations began, drew England away from co-operation 
with Austria and Prussia, placed her in separate connexion with France, 
and made himself the medium, through which the pressure of the 
French Emperor was put upon the Premier and those members of 
the English Cabinet, who were desirous of peace. When the Cabinet 
hesitated, even after the disaster of Sinope, to cast the fatal die, he 
resigned ; and when, after a secession of ten days, he withdrew his 
resignation, the fatal die was cast.’ ”— Saturday Review. 

We thus see, that the Prime Minister of England was the 
approver, if not the accomplice, of the coup d'etat. The author 
doubtless relied, if not upon the co-operation, at all events upon the 
countenance, of the abettor.'*’ 

* With regard to the coup d'etai , the late Lord Normanby has stated, that Lord 
Palmerston’s approval of that act led to an eternal severance between himself and 
his diplomatic chief. 



202 


OUGIIT EEANCE TO WOESIIIP TIIE BONAPAETES ? 


Apostrophising the Imperial dignity, the Man of December 
might say, “Let thy beauty gild my crimes, and whatsoever I 
commit of treachery or deceit shall be imputed to me as a 
merit. Treachery ? wliat’s treachery ? Ambition, like love, cancels 

all the bonds of friendship.Ah! but is there not such 

a thing as honesty ? Yes, and whosoever has it about him bears 

an enemy in his breast.For wisdom and honesty, give me 

cunning and hypocrisy. . . Then that hungry gudgeon credulity will 
bite at any thing. Why, let me see; I have the same face, the 
same words and accents, when I speak what I think, and when I 
speak what I do not think—the very same ; and dear dissimulation 
is the only art not to be known from nature.”— Congreve. 

And when his triumph was completed, our Premier may have 
exclaimed, “I think I may say, he wants nothing but a blue ribbon 
and a star to make him shine the very Phosphorus of our hemisphere.” 
—Ib. 

“ Other politicians have obtained ascendancy in the counsels of the 
nation, from eminent services, or the possession of superior ability. 
But Lord Palmerston’s claim is not of this character. He is a 
Nestor, without his wisdom or sagacity. He does not profess to 
follow out a policy that must, from its sterling merit, command 
universal respect. His title to office consists in doing nothing. He 
can play off one party against another, turn the mistakes of his col¬ 
leagues into ridicule, and restore the good-humour of the House, 
when it is most ruffled, by jokes long since worn threadbare. Hence 
the history of session after session, under his sway, is painfully mono¬ 
tonous.”— Press. 

“The age, however, has grown reckless. This organ of great 
pretensions (the Times') may also have become a victim to the 
expediency doctrine, and by its silence, more eloquently than it can 
do in words, proclaim as a virtue in Lord Palmerston, that which it 
denounces as a crime in Lord Derby.”— lb. 

“ The advocates, who strained the doctrine of responsibility to the 
utmost, in order to render a ruler or Minister, whom they disliked, 
accountable for every act of oppression or tyranny formerly committed 
in Italy, now disclaim any similar obligation on the part of the actual 
authorities. If journals are suppressed in Italy, editors dragged to 
prison, the press gagged, citizens deprived of their liberty, men 
shot without trial for political offences, and others left to languish in 




OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


203 


fetters, justification is pleaded by no less a personage than our Prime 
Minister, who, while admitting that abuses exist, declares that they 
are the relics of a former system. This is a poor excuse for mis- 
government. ’ 5 — Press. 

“ We are constrained to say, when we read his speeches, that Lord 
Palmerston’s Scotch audiences must have been wonderful people too; 
and we may add, that it is a wonderful nation, that submits itself 
with such obsequious tameness to the guidance of a statesman of this 
type. Certainly the first impression made on the mind of any one 
who reads the cheerful speeches, which the Premier delivered during 
his Northern progress, is, that they simply contain a string of truisms, 
which no one else would have thought it worth his while to enun¬ 
ciate. ”—Saturday Review. 

“More than five years ago, Lord Palmerston was driven from 
power almost solely in resentment of his careless and contemptuous 
bearing, within a feAV months of a general election, which had given 
him the largest majority that any recent Minister lias commanded.” 
—II. 

11 Few men can surpass him in the art of making a genial after- 
dinner speech, that shall delight everybody and mean nothing; and, 
as a manufacturer of extempore bad jokes, he is unapproachable.” 
—Ib. 

“Lord Palmerston’s mode of drawing cheers from a municipal 
assemblage, is one that neither Pitt nor Peel would have practised to 
save their lives.”— Ib. 

“Lord Palmerston meditated and attempted an appointment so 
scandalously bad, that the object of his patronage (no unprejudiced 
judge in his own case), was forced, for very shame, to abandon pre¬ 
ferment for which he was obliged to acknowledge his total unfitness.” 
—Ib. 

“It was bestowed as a mere reward for private political services 
done to himself, not by the new Canon, but by the Canon’s con¬ 
nexions in marriage. The bread which ought to be reserved for 
learning and active services, is cast out to those who are gorged with 
the good things of the Church. Those dignities which even Reform 
spared, for the honour and usefulness of the Church, are to be held 
as private rewards for private services. If this is so if Canonries of 
Canterbury are to be bestowed, like tide-waiterships and post-office 
clerkships, upon the distant friends and relations of the hungry 


204 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


clients of a Prime Minister’s local constituents—why, the sooner 
canonries and stalls are swept away the better .”—Saturday Review. 

“Lord Palmerston originates nothing, but occupies himself exclu¬ 
sively with picking up his colleagues, as fast as they tumble over 
their own measures. Like the Hindu deity, it is his ceaseless mis¬ 
sion to undo the difficulties, which it is their ceaseless mission to 
create. In this dramatic division of characters, each man does his 
part to admiration. Sir George Grey and Mr. Gladstone have no 
equals in the art of doing the wrong thing ; and no man will ever 
surpass Lord Palmerston in the art of persuading the world, that it 
was the right one.”— lb. 

“ It is perfectly true, that one section of the House enthusiastically 
supports his foreign policy, and that the other section are admirers, 
almost equally ardent, of his domestic policy. But the converse 
statement would be equally accurate. If all those who dislike his 
foreign policy, and all who dislike his domestic policy, were to 
combine, the opposition marshalled against him would be over¬ 
whelming. ”— lb. 

“No one can identify Lord Palmerston with a single Liberal 
speech. Up to the time that his Government succeeded one, which 
fell to pieces in consequence of its carrying on feebly a war which it 
accepted unwillingly, Lord Palmerston was known only as the 
occupant of an office under all kinds of administrations, which dealt 
with continental traditions and diplomatic trickeries. He was 
supposed to be a vigorous Foreign Secretary, which means, it 
appears, a person who was free to choose, with scarce any possi¬ 
bility of criticism or detection, whatever capricious counsels he 
chose to adopt towards foreign states. Lord Palmerston made the 
English nation as heartily detested abroad as any could be, which 
was understood to be vexatious to the stronger, and a bully to the 
weaker Powers.”— lb. 

“ On Wednesday, Lord Palmerston treated the Eomsey labourers 
with certain prizes, a substantial dinner, some good advice, and a 
great many bad jokes .”—Saturday Review. 

“Lord Palmerston is no orator at all. Perpetual despatch¬ 
writing has deprived his language of every vestige of grace; and 
his sentences are often so badly constructed that the friendly 
revision of the reporter is absolutely necessary to make them 
publicly presentable.”— lb. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


205 


“It took a very long plummet-line to fathom the deep sea of our 
Crimean'* or our Indian expenditure. When the waves became calm 
enough for financial sounding, it appeared, that we had thrown 
the nice round sum of a hundred millions into the Black Sea, and 
scattered not much less on the sands of India.”— Times. 

And yet, strange to say, both the Times and the Saturday Review 
express their confidence in a Government, every member of which 
they have so often ridiculed or condemned. 

“ While there is little difference of opinion on domestic questions, 
Lord Palmerston's foreign policy commands a degree of assent and confi¬ 
dence ,i which has seldom been accorded to his predecessors .”— Times. 

“ They have damaged the position and authority of a Government which 
no sensible and patriotic Englishman can desire to see displaced or 
weakened. ’ ’—Saturday Review. 

“ There is a period when we should bid adieu to political contests; 
these, as well as those of wrestlers, being absurd, when the strength 
and vigour of life are gone.”— Plutarch , Lucullus. 

II.— Lord Westbury. 

“When Sir Bichard Bethell was appointed Lord Chancellor, he 
had expected to see some useful and much wanted measures of legal 
reform introduced; but accession to the woolsack seemed to have 
brought forgetfulness of the past.”— Speech in the House of Commons. 

“ In the course which had been taken, this wholesome rule of action 
had been departed from, and he had heard with regret the defence 
urged by men in the high position of the noble duke and the noble 
and learned lord on the woolsack.”— Earl Grey. 

“We might have expected much more from many of the members 
of the present Government than they give us. More especially, the 
Lord Chancellor is a source of reasonable disappointment.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“ The appointment of near relatives to every vacant office, and the 
production of a Bankruptcy Bill, which requires already the tinkering 
which all Bankruptcy Bills appear in succession to require, are not 
very splendid results.”— lb. 

“Lord Stanley of Alderley scarcely consulted the stability and 

* A war ascribable solely to Lord Palmerston’s infatuated predilection for the Man 
of December, and his evident approval of the coup d'etat . 


206 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONA PARTES ? 


harmony of the Ministry when he taunted the Chancellor with 
caprices of conscience and neglect of Parliamentary duty.”— Saturday 
Review. 

III.— Mr. Gladstone. 

Mr. Gladstone, the accomplished and learned Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, has also distinguished himself by his visions and vagaries, 
and by courting public applause at popular banquets, to an extent 
almost unprecedented on the part of statesmen in high office. 

“During his illegal excursion to Corfu, Mr. Gladstone indulged 
in the most extravagant antics, by which any contemporary states¬ 
man has illustrated the comparative advantages of clulness and 
mediocrity.”— Saturday Review. 

“ It pleased an English High Commissioner and an English 
►Secretary of State to bestow on the Ionian Islands a Constitution, 
which might have been thought the worst that was possible, if 
Mr. Gladstone had not devised an aggravation of its evils.”— lb. 

“ The Kepresentative Assemblies of the Ionian Islands have never 
earned or merited the respect either of the protecting Power or of 
their own constituencies. A shallow pedantry conferred the elective 
franchise on an ignorant peasantry, or, in the towns, on an irrespon¬ 
sible mob; and corrupt demagogues, aided by the most debased 
priesthood in Europe, naturally profited by perverse institutions to 
gratify their cupidity, their vanity, and their spite.” —Saturday 
Review. 

“ His flowing sentences conveyed little else than the cloudy 
verbiage, with which he so often foils too eager an assailant in the 
House of Commons. Those airy shadows of ideas, which seem to be 
thoughts till you come to examine them closely, but which, on a 
nearer scrutiny, turn out to be nothing but impalpable masses of 
verbal mist, wreathed into the most beautiful forms the English 
language can supply, are admirably adapted for the purposes of the 
starring statesman.”— lb. 

11 It has been the will of our Chancellor of the Exchequer to take 
off taxes rather with a view to his own notions of symmetry and 
expediency, than to the demand of the people.” —Liberal Paper. 

“The unlucky speech made by Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle seems 
not only to have excited the apprehension of the cotton-merchants of 
Manchester, but also of the American Minister in London.”— lb . 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


207 


“ The chief employment of Mr. Gladstone’s private secretary, for 
some time past, has been to repudiate the words which, in a 
moment of poetic exultation, his chief uttered concerning the 
position and prospects of the Southern States of America.”— Satur¬ 
day Review. 

11 The sole prestige of the present Cabinet centres in the Premier. 
In the estimation of the country, Lord Palmerston is the Government. 
Ministerial candidates swear by no one else. Lord Pussell is already 
becoming a name of the past, and in practical administration has 
proved himself the greatest blunderer of his day. As regards Mr. 
Gladstone, the country has got sick of his clever and risky budgets, 
and sighs for a plain business-like balancing of income and expen¬ 
diture, accompanied by as much economy as can be effected with¬ 
out impairing the efficiency of our national establishments. But 
Lord Palmerston, with fourscore years on his shoulders, has now a 
greater reputation than he ever had, or than is accorded to any of 
his contemporaries .”—Liberal Paper. 

11 The moral of the matter is, that, unless you can buy cheers 
cheaper, it is better to forego the luxury. Popular plaudits are a 
pleasant unguent to the afflicted soul, especially when it is raw with 
the inward consciousness of failure. But the soothing balm may 
bear too high a price .”—Saturday Review. 

1 ‘ Again, there was the speech of Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle. I 
know the case of a man, who a week before bought 300 bales of cotton 
in Liverpool, intending to work them up, calculating that he would 
be able to keep his mills going till Christmas. The moment he read 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s speech, he sent word to his broker 
at Liverpool to sell his cotton instantly, and if he had kept it four or 
five days he would have lost a very large sum by it.”— Mr. Bright. 

“ Neither the impolicy of the tax, nor the weary argumentation 
by which perverse economists have defended it, would have led to 
the defeat of the Government, had it not been for the want of 
temper and judgment shown by Mr. Gladstone.”— Times. 

“We cannot imagine how an experienced politician could court 
defeat as Mr. Gladstone did on Tuesday night upon Mr. Sheridan’s 
resolution on the Eire Insurance Duty.”— lb. 

“ The minor accessories of the Budget, consisting of three or four 
petty contrivances for the annoyance of taxpayers, rather than for 
the increase of the revenue, excited amusement instead of irritation, 


208 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


as they offered a comparatively harmless vent for Mr. Gladstone’s 
well-known eccentricities.”— Times. 

“Mr. Gladstone, as in former years, finds it easier to astonish 
than to persuade, and, in the absence of his chief, he has occasion¬ 
ally shown that the art of governing and guiding a deliberative 
assembly is not to be counted among his extraordinary gifts.”— lb. 

“The Commons will not be bullied. It is the misfortune of 
Mr. Gladstone, that he has more than once attempted coercion 
instead of persuasion ; and the fact that his wonderful oratory seems 
to excite opposition almost as often as to induce acquiescence is of 
evil omen to his career as a Parliamentary chief.”— lb. 

“ There has been gathered from the events of this session one 
remarkable fact, and that is the impossibility of Mr. Gladstone ever 
being able to lead the House of Commons. He has been several 
times placed in temporary command, and it is in vain to deny that 
he exhibited none of the qualities which are essential to so difficult 
and delicate a duty .”—Illustrated News. 

“ Whether it was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer really 
had no heart in the ungracious task that was set him, or whether he 
knew all along that success was impossible, he certainly went 
through his work in a way which was sure to exasperate the House. 
He almost showed that he saw, and resented, the dirt he had to eat. 
If it were possible to imagine a professional gentleman giving a nod 
and a wink to a policeman, before operating on a pocket, such an 
improbability would convey some impression of the obtrusive 
blundering with which Mr. Gladstone introduced the vote. He 
simply did everything to make it impossible for the House to submit 
to so stupid an attempt at petty larceny .”—Saturday Review. 

“It is a strong symptom of something unsound in our political 
system that the man who throws all the energy of his intellect and 
heart into the most trivial question of finance appears to exert him¬ 
self on such great topics as the integrity of Turkey and the inde¬ 
pendence of Poland only to conceal his real thoughts. Very weary, 
almost mournful, it was to watch the wanderings of Mr. Gladstone’s 
slow and measured harangue round and round the question raised 
by Mr. Horsman.”— Star. 

“ He has too styles of speaking—the angry and the ambiguous. 
When he is angry, he is as clear as crystal; when he is wordy and 
obscure, he is as mild as a sucking dove. But, except in some great 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES? 


209 


and carefully prepared efforts, lie lias never yet succeeded in pro¬ 
ducing an address that was at once pacific and intelligible. The 
result is, that he always either insults or mystifies his hearers.”— 
Saturday Review. 

11 Mr. Gladstone has never yet brought in a budget without piling 
upon the top of it a heap of financial odds and ends. He hardly ever 
succeeds in carrying the bundle through, without the loss of one or 
two of them, though his mishaps have seldom been so numerous and 
important as in the present year. Last year he only dropped tlio 
brewing-tax, that was to be exacted from the butlers of private gen¬ 
tlemen.’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“ The characteristic taste for inflicting annoyance on tax-payers 
exhibits itself, on the present occasion, in two or three contrivances 
for creating the largest amount of vexation, with the smallest benefit 
to the revenue.”— lb. 

“A measure of distance, which might seem very small to people 
with common eyesight, was more than broad enough to afford com¬ 
modious standing room to a man delighting , as Mr. Gladstone did, 
in refinements and slender distinctions.”—Kinglake , I. 380. 

“ An utter want of proportion, has always been the defect of 
Mr. Gladstone’s mind. He is wholly incapable of comparing the 
magnitudes of the difficulties he removes and of the evils he incurs.” 
—Saturday Review. 

“Mr. Gladstone has shown, by repeated experiments, that it is 
quite possible to propose an innocuous tax, or even a remission of 
taxation, in language that shall effectually alarm every capitalist 
in the country.”— lb. 

u There is something fine in the knight-errant-like spirit in which 
Mr. Gladstone seeks out a difficulty. His position as Chancellor of 
the Exchequer furnishes him with considerable facilities for aggra¬ 
vation.”— lb. 

11 His anxiety to wound, occasionally over-reached itself, by leading 
him to neglect even the pretence of argument.”— lb. 

“ Mr. Gladstone was in no mood to listen to the counsels of his 
supporters. A Malay, well primed with bang , is hardly more 
amenable to the restraints of prudence, than a theorist whose course 
has been arrested by a barrier of unmanageable facts. Whatever 
the consequences to his own influence, or to his party’s credit, he was 
bent upon his revenge.”— Jb. 


o 


210 


QUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ It is impossible to understand Mr. Gladstone’s speech, upon any 
other theory, than that it was constructed so as to inflict the greatest 
possible amount of irritation .”—Saturday Review. 

“Between his finance and his foreign sympathies, the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer has fallen into an ignoble dilemma. He has had 
to give up all the novelties of a budget, the first principle of which 
he proclaimed to be simplicity, and to retract all the opinions of a 
pamphlet, which, beyond everything, aimed at being popular. The 
popularity and the genius vanish at the side scenes together.” 

‘ 1 This session Mr. Gladstone proposes to put a penny per head 
per annum upon all the members of clubs. This is as near as pos¬ 
sible what his new tax will amount to. He proposes to take £17 Is. 
from every ‘ club or association,’ for a licence to sell beer and spirits 
to the members. As a source of revenue, this proposition is simply 
absurd.” 

“ But Mr. Gladstone’s effrontery would persevere for twelve 
months in the year in rescinding, recalcitrating, self-confutation, and 
denial. Perhaps, however, he is hardly to blame in the matter. 
Flattery has made him what he is. The people behind the Treasury 
bench have made him the Merlin of their unaccomplished wonders 
they have taught him to consider himself subtle ; they have poisoned 
him with their servile praise ; and now it is a subject rather of pride 
than of shame to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he has 
despised and insulted the opinions, by turns, of every other states¬ 
man in the realm, as w r ell as trampled upon his own. Three times 
this session has he recanted .”—Liberal Paper. 

“Mr. Gladstone’s achievement of assimilating clubs and public- 
houses is eminently one of these. He can do it, perhaps, but only 
because he is Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are many other 
minor follies, which he might also safely permit himself, for the same 
reason. People will not refuse the supplies, or damage a Government 
upon the vital point of their finance, for so small a matter as this.”— 
'Times. 

“ There is an excess of constructive skill, that runs into perversity. 
We have seen Mr. Gladstone ‘ dig holes ’ in the revenue, for the pur¬ 
pose of filling them again, and create a giant, for no visible purpose 
save to slay him skilfully. But why call into existence a miserable 
tribe of dwarfs, since no glory can be achieved by smothering 
pigmies? However, the last of this year’s batch was quietly 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 211 

l 

‘ dropped ’ last night into the gulf that had swallowed its brethren.” 
— Times. 

1 ‘ Thus far the career of Mr. Gladstone has been one of steady and 
rapid progress. He has travelled perhaps farther in political enlighten¬ 
ment than any statesman of his day, if we survey the distance travelled 
since the publication of his early views on the relations of Church 
and State. Has he not now reached a period when a distinct step of 
further emancipation is needful ? ”— Radical Taper. 

IV.— Sir Robert Peel. 

“ Sir Robert Peel’s vigour appears to be entirely exhausted, in the 
effort to prepare those sarcasms, in which he is wont to express his 
contempt for the race, whom it is his unhappy destiny to govern.”— 
Saturday Review. 


V.— Sir George Grey. 

“It is gratifying to learn, that a glimmer of common sense has at 
last visited the Home Office. We should hesitate to believe it on 
any but the very best evidence, but the fact seems to be sufficiently 
authenticated. We have official authority for the assertion, that Sir 
George Grey is at length shaken in the conviction, that it is expedient 
to deluge society with hordes of half-punished and wholly unre¬ 
formed malefactors.”— John Bull. 

“Few persons can have been sanguine enough to expect, that 
Sir George Grey would relish a proposal so intensely disagreeable to 
the felon community, and so utterly repugnant to the first principles 
of philanthropy. His objections are eminently characteristic, and 
fully justify the well-earned claim of the present Home Secretary to 
go down to posterity as the Garotter’s Friend.”— Saturday Review. 

“No Ministry can exist long upon that negative popularity which 
is based upon its inaction, and which is therefore largely com¬ 
pounded of contempt. Virtuous and courteous debility, is a quality 
of mind useful enough in a stop-gap or a sinecurist; but the 
Ministry that treats the Home Office as a sinecure, to be filled up 
by the possessor of such qualifications, dangerously trifles with its 
reputation.”— John Bull. 

“ Sir George Grey’s account of the considerations, which induced 
him to commute the sentence on M‘Lachlan, is perhaps unexampled 

o 2 


212 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


as a specimen of confusion of thought, and weakness of purpose, 
and undisguised submission to influences, which a responsible states¬ 
man ought to be ashamed of recognising.” —Saturday Review. 

“Even Mr. Gladstone, simultaneously challenging clubs, charities, 
railways, carriers, and Irishmen, has hardly created a body of such 
embittered enemies, as were produced by Sir George Grey’s ill-timed 
and ill-framed attempt to retrench a single prerogative of the City.” 
—John Bull. 

“That Mr. Adderley should have been able, in the teeth of tho 
Home Secretary, to carry a reform in the criminal law by a majority 
of two to one, shows how deeply the office has sunk in the estima¬ 
tion of the House of Commons, under the management of its present 
possessor. It is a consolation to be assured by that division, that the 
public security does not lie at the mercy of any one man’s inca¬ 
pacity. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“It is doubtful whether Sir George Grey will be able to muster 
energy enough to defeat the tenacious opposition with which he will 
have to struggle. His weakness in dealing with the convict question 
has fatally damaged his influence.”— John Bull. 

“The fact is, that Sir George Grey has, to use the vulgar ex¬ 
pression, brought an old house over his head; and he certainly is 
not the man, judging from his antecedents, to take a much more 
dignified course, than to run away from the dust and rubbish which 
is tumbling about his ears.”— Saturday Review. 

“His speech on the M‘Lachlan case can only be regarded as 
setting a premium on the worst and most demoralizing sort of 
popular agitation. ’ ’ — Ih . 

“With his usual well-intentioned feebleness, Sir George Grey 
made an attempt to represent the question as capable of being post- 
lioned or huddled-up.”— Ih. 

“At the present moment, it is felt, that the exercise of autho¬ 
rity by Sir George Grey is capricious, unstable, and desultory. lie 
interferes where interference is questionable—he is inactive and slumberous 
where energy and decision are required.”—Saturday Review. 

“ Facts have incidentally illustrated the singular recklessness with 
which the prerogative of mercy is administered by Sir George 
Grey.”— lb. 

“ Trial by Jury and the Commission of Assize are reduced to a 
mere farce. All the criminal trials may, and are likely to be, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


213 


resolved into what is ultimately a secret investigation in the Home 
Office. The Old Bailey and the Assize Court are merely a solemn 
mockery, concluding nothing if the convict has friends , or money , or 
'importunity enough to get the case revised before Sir George Grey .”— 
Saturday Review . 


YI.—Sir Charles Wood. 

u Sir Charles Wood’s speech at Halifax is, in many respects, a 
modest Ministerial speech. It reveals nothing; it expresses no 
opinion ; it pledges him to no policy with respect to the future ; and 
it is perfectly unintelligible in its references to the past. And if, in 
any part of it, there should be an accidental chink that might dis¬ 
close to some keen-eyed opponent the inner secrets of the Cabinet, 
he has been careful to provide against the danger by making the 
whole of it so dull that even an adversary will scarcely read it through .” 
—Ib. 

11 His speeches are dull and long, ill-arranged and ill-delivered. 
Unhappily, he is not content that they should be negatively bad. 
He has an idea that some play of fancy, some coruscations of wit, 
are necessary to decorate and relieve the monotonous statements of 
facts, which it is in his duty to deliver.”— Ib. 

“The humour bears the marks of its artificial production, and is 
not a cheerful kind of humour at all, but has a grim, dried-up, 
dusty look about it.”— Ib. 

“What lies at the root of his unpopularity is the conviction, that 
he is thoroughly unequal to the dignity and importance of the post 
he occupies.”— Ib. 

VII.— Mr. Lowe. 

‘ ‘ Another Eevised Code has, in another department of the Privy 
Council administering the national funds, paralysed education, and 
disgusted the friends of education, throughout the country. It is 
curious, that Mr. Lowe has, in the two departments of his office, 
pursued the very same plan, with the very same results.”— Ib. 

VIII.— Mr. Layard. 

“Mr. Layard can only be looked upon as an undisciplined 
auxiliary, who is put forward in the front, like the negroes in the 
Federal army, simply to be slaughtered.”— Ib. 


214 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


There is little to be hoped, and much to be dreaded, whilst the 
affairs of this country are confided to such hands,'*' and especially 
whilst the statesman, who is described in a recent number of an 
influential review, as “having no principle,” continues to preside at 
the helm. It is, however, consolatory and cheering, that the bulk 
of the British nation is fully aware of the danger which threatens 
our liberties and our property, from the intrigues and machinations 
of the Prime Minister’s great ally and boon companion, and that 
they are preparing for that strategic movement, which there is much 
cause to expect from that quarter, and none to apprehend from any 
other. 

IX. —Earl Bussell. 

Earl Eussell, in the waywardness of his proceedings as Foreign 
Secretary, has combined all the busybodiness of the Marplot, with 
the bharrerie of the Merry Andrew. 

“ * There is not-,’ said Sydney Smith, in one of his letters to Arch¬ 
deacon Singleton, 1 a better man in England than Lord John 
Eussell; his worst failure is, that he is utterly ignorant of all 
moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I believe 
he would perform the operation for the stone—build St. Peter’s 
(with or without ten minutes’ notice)—assume the command of the 
Channel Fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the 
patient had died—the church tumbled down—and the Channel Fleet 
been knocked to atoms.’ This was written thirty years ago, but 
Earl Eussell, in his old age, appears to be as bold as ever. He has 
offered the Pope an asylum within Her Majesty’s dominions, and— 
of all places in Her Majesty’s dominions—within the island of 
Malta! Desirable as it is to get His Holiness from Home, we 
heartily congratulate the Foreign Secretary that he has not been 
taken at his word.”— Liberal Paper. 

“Unfortunately, Lord John Eussell was not content to act; he 
must also philosophise; and, by his general speculations, he has got 
us into more trouble and difficulty, than we incurred by all our 
support of liberty against authority.”— Times , 1860. 

* The sentiments of other nations towards a land so misgoverned as Britain has 
been of late years, may well be imagined. “ If the vanity of Englishmen requires 
a corrective, they have only to ascertain the feelings with which their country is 
regarded byjieighbouring and rival nations .”—Saturday Review. 


215 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONARARTES ? 

“ We could almost imagine Lord Kussell and Mr. Layard, under 
the influence of the same intoxicating prospect, executing, on his 
lordship’s return from Scotland, a pas de triomphe round the Foreign 
Office. The world is all before them. Even without their aid, the 
nations are well enough inclined to turmoil and confusion.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“ They have a perfect right to congratulate themselves upon the 
opportunity of a good deal of demonstration, and meditation, and 
unasked advice, before Parliament has reassembled again to spoil 
the game.”— lb. 

1 ‘There was the Brazilian lark—in which they had really got as 
far as blockading the port of Bio, because three jolly tars had been 
locked up after dinner one evening for a row with the police. Par¬ 
liament met, and it became necessary to submit to all kinds of 
tedious and pedantic formalities.”— lb. 

“ Japan is exactly a type of the class of Power upon which the 
Foreign Secretary likes to discharge the wrath which has accumu¬ 
lated in disputes with larger States. It is too distant to excite very 
keen interest, too barbarous to make its case known in England, and 
too weak to offer any resistance that might be damaging.”— lb. 

“When Parliament met, the whole policy had to be renounced, 
and even to be formally repudiated by the Prime Minister.”— lb. 

“It is not altogether incredible, that the Foreign Secretary has 
taken the opportunity to proclaim at the same time some of the 
inopportune truths or constitutional fallacies, which drop so readily 
from his practised pen. If he has really made the gratuitous asser¬ 
tion, that States have a right to get rid of bad rulers, his admirers 
will be unwillingly compelled to abandon his discretion to Mr. 
Disraeli’s mercy, although they may continue to defend the sub¬ 
stance of his policy.”— lb. 

“ Lord Bussell has forwarded to Vienna a note, in which he speaks 
of the rights of nations to depose bad rulers, a doctrine which must 
now be less offensive to Austrian ears than it was a few years ago.” 
—Liberal Paper. 

“His Lordship is notoriously apt to change his most settled 
opinions, as is evident, not only from this China affair, but from 
many others, of which, unhappily for the country, he has at present 
the chief control and direction.”— Press. 

“ Lord Bussell’s view of an impartial neutrality is to insult both 


216 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPAllTES ? 


parties equally—a system, wliicli has the salutary effect of securing 
the largest amount of hatred at the smallest possible profit. France 
despoils her neighbours freely, but she never wounds their feelings, 
and therefore she enjoys more friends than we do. The glorious 
insolence of our Foreign Office style is more irritating to human 
frailty, than the loss of a battle or the annexation of a province.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“It is to be hoped, that we have at last sounded the lowest 
depth of Lord Bussell’s folly. Once more restored to the whole¬ 
some atmosphere of the House of Lords, he may, perhaps, recover 
his usual good sense. Meanwhile, we cannot but think that his 
autumnal speculations have taken a most unfortunate direction.” 
—lb. 

“ Any more embarrassing situation than that marked out for us by 
the Foreign Secretary it would scarcely be possible to conceive.”— 
Liberal Paper. 

1. Denmark. 

“We are at the mercy of the Foreign Secretary for the mode in 
which our communications are made to foreign Q-overnments, and 
the shape they take ; and either from the habits of their class, or from 
the training of Parliamentary life, English noblemen issue, as a 
rule, despatches, which are matchless for bad taste and ill-chosen 
language. Lord Bussell has just issued to the world a most de¬ 
plorable specimen. He has addressed a small, a friendly, and a 
high-spirited Court in the terms of an arrogance which, to every 
fault of ill manners, adds that of a very poor sort of cowardice, con¬ 
sidering that it is England that speaks, and Denmark that is bid to 
listen. Very probably Lord Bussell did not mean any special insult 
to Denmark, and was really trying to help both Germany and Den¬ 
mark by suggesting the best arrangement of their differences he 
could think of. We do not complain of his policy, but we at once 
deplore and resent his language .”—Saturday Review. 

“The Foreign Secretary is the only man who has the power of 
really saying what is said ; and if he chooses to write as Lord John 
Bussell has written, we are all helpless, and have to abide by the 
fact, that England has tried to bully Denmark. It is only a very 
faint redress to be able to represent, through unofficial channels, to 
the Danes, that this despatch is the work not of England, but of a 


f 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 217 

Foreign Secretary who has through life been an honest and upright 
public servant, but who is one of the rashest and most ill-advised of 
men, when he takes a pen into his hand.”— Saturday Review. 

u Sometimes it is a sudden resignation, conceived and executed 
for the purpose of tripping up a body of too-confiding col¬ 
leagues. Sometimes it is an alarming announcement, that we 
have broken with a 1 trusty and loyal ally.’ During the present 
recess he has been peculiarly successful in the conception and execu¬ 
tion of these startling performances. There has been something 
more than usually audacious and elfish in his antics. . . . He 
has forestalled the decision of the House of Commons by proposing 
to make away with an important national possession during its pro¬ 
rogation ; and he has picked a gratuitous quarrel with the native 
country of our future Queen.”— lb. 

“ His insolent despatch was a sudden abandonment of the views 
that England had held for years; and it took place precisely when 
there was reason to believe that Austria and Prussia were becoming 
serious in their designs on Denmark. It announced, in the most 
galling language, that we were about to desert the weak, whom we 
had hitherto defended, in favour of the strong, whom we had hitherto 
opposed—just at the moment that the friendship of the weak was 
likely to become inconvenient. It is difficult to frame a more 
complete illustration of the vice of political baseness ; and it was 
all the more striking as coming from a Government which always 
displays such exemplary politeness to great Powers. All this 
degradation might have been avoided if Lord Bussell could only 
have repressed his mania for offering unasked advice.”— lb. 

11 He may have confirmed the German Courts in their extravagant 
pretensions, and he has certainly damped the friendship of a country, 
with which England has every motive for wishing to stand well. 
It was hardly necessary to add to the already crowded ranks of our 
ill-wishers on the Continent.”— lb. 

“The reply of the Danish Minister is as temperate and con¬ 
ciliatory as the letter of our Foreign Secretary is brusque and 
extravagant.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The maintenance of the common Constitution in Schleswig is a 
vital question for Denmark. The Danish Government will, there¬ 
fore, firmly adhere to the line of conduct prescribed by this convic¬ 
tion. The acceptance of the propositions made by Earl Bussell 


218 


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would lead to the destruction of Constitutional life in Denmark, and 
would soon even imperil the existence of the monarchy itself.”— 
Danish Minister. 

“ Lord John Bussell, though he can bully Denmark, cannot think 
of calling’ upon Bussia to observe in Poland an agreement quite 
as important as the one which Bussia called upon us to observe the 
other day in Greece .”—Liberal Paper. 

“Lord Bussell has addressed a second despatch to tho Danish 
Government, couched in even stronger terms than the one on which 
we found it our duty to pronounce severe condemnation a fortnight 
since. We had no hope, that the noble Lord would recant and 
apologise; for, if he is lacking in judgment, he is abundantly 
endowed with the audacity, which makes a man persistent in error. 
But he has repeated his blunder in a tone more saucy and super¬ 
cilious than we expected would have been the case. What the 
result of his obstinacy may be, time only can show. We devoutly 
hope it may not be the subjection of Denmark to the sinister 
ambition of the King of Prussia! ”— lb. 

“It is impossible not to connect this imbroglio with the recollec¬ 
tion of other troubles, by which Lord Bussell’s recent administration 
has been marked. He has already led England into more than one 
difficulty, not so much by distinct errors of policy, as by sourness of 
temper and discourtesy of language. The sting of his despatch to 
Denmark, was less its substance than its form. In the judgment of 
most Englishmen, it leant too strongly to the side of Germany, but 
the deep offence which it caused, arose from the dictatorial insolence 
with which the Foreign Minister’s suggestions were conveyed.”— 
Saturday Review. 

‘ 1 Eor some reason unknown to the world, the noble Earl at the 
head of the Foreign Office had adopted at the close of last year a 
policy entirely contradictory to that which he and his predecessors 
in office had theretofore maintained. The noble Earl, in a com¬ 
munication to the Court of Denmark, proposed a new constitution 
for the kingdom and its dependencies—a proposal which no one 
approved, and which met with a decided refusal from the Danish 
Court. A more extraordinary communication was, indeed, never 
made, for it might have been supposed, that its author was 
Prime Minister of Denmark instead of being only the Foreign 
Minister of a friendly power. This was a most dangerous as 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 219 

well as a very extraordinary and ridiculous proceeding.”— Mr. Fitz¬ 
gerald. 

“We have seen Foreign Secretaries, who fancy themselves 
complete letter writers .... official blundering and perver¬ 
sity have, perhaps, never been carried further.” — Saturday 
Review. 

1 ‘ Earl Russell was not satisfied with mere threats, but employed 
actual force, a strong step to have taken at the expense of a peace¬ 
able, friendly, and weak state.”— lb. 

‘‘ The most unnecessary and mischievous despatch we have lately 
seen, is one from Lord Russell to Mr. Paget at Copenhagen, on the 
subject of the Danish Duchies.”— lb 

11 Lord Russell, having been all his life concerned with the regular 
party politics of the House of Commons, no sooner goes officially 
abroad, by accepting the Foreign Secretaryship, than he is anxious to 
give the world his opinions on every Continental question, great or 
small. When we find in a despatch relating to the affairs of an 
independent State a sentence such as this,—‘ The best means to put 
a stop to this for the future will be to grant perfect independence to 
Schleswig,’—we are forced to ask whether the duty of a British 
Foreign Secretary is to conduct the international affairs of England, 
or to put himself forward as the general arbiter of everything every¬ 
where. It seems strange, too, that just when the Heir to the British 
Crown is about to marry a Princess of Denmark, a Minister of Queen 
Victoria should be gratuitously making such propositions as the 
following to a Government, to which he has no more right to dictate 
than to France or Russia:—‘ Holstein and Lauenburg should have 
everything the German Confederation asks for them.’ ‘Schleswig 
shall have power to govern itself, and not be represented in the 
Reichsrath.’ Whatever be the merits of the dispute, it cannot be 
the business of a British Minister to deal offhand in this manner 
with the most vital interests of foreign States. It is such restless, 
and yet impotent meddling, that has brought on our foreign policy 
so many rebuffs, and lessens the influence of our counsels at times 
when they might be fairly given.”— Times. 

1 * "What is new to him he thinks must be new to all the statesmen 
of Europe, and we, consequently, are in danger of having some very 
troublesome questions reopened by a Minister, who appears to think 
that the affairs of America, of Mexico, of Rome, of Greece, and of 


220 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


China are not enough to satisfy his legitimate cravings for influence 
and distinction.”— Times. 

JDagbladet thus concludes: “ It is evident, that Earl Bussell has 
been led into an error; but, even supposing that he were in the 
right, it can never suit him to meddle in this way with any such 
affairs. 

“There was a foundation in fact for Earl Bussell’s despatch, 
although nothing could excuse its harsh and arrogant tone.” 

“If, in the course of the session, these Estates have had any 
reason to feel the slightest degree of satisfaction, it can only have 
been on finding, that, in his too famous despatch on Danish affairs, 
Earl Bussell had almost completely adopted the views on these which 
they had entertained in 1858, and that his lordship had thus rather 
become a partisan with them, than a mediator, as he should have 
been .”—Morning Post. 

“In the case at issue, his observations are in the worst taste.”— 
Press. 

2. Brazil. 

“Will Lord Bussell complacently refer to a subject, which makes 
every honest Englishman blush with patriotic shame—such shame 
as Englishmen have not had occasion to feel since England was a 
nation—the infamous outrage offered to the high-spirited, enlight¬ 
ened, honourable, and most friendly Government of Brazil?”— 
Morning Herald. 

“We cannot believe, that those, who have so signally dishonoured 
themselves and their country, will be allowed further opportunities 
of exercising their talents to serve the enemies, to alienate the allies, 
to imperil the interests, and to sacrifice the dominions of England.” 
—Ib. 

“The antecedents of Earl Bussell have been so tricky, and his 
interference so meddlesome, on a host of subjects that had been much 
better left alone, that we are very fearful it will turn out that he has 
been at his old work again, involving the country and himself in no 
very creditable proceedings .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ Earl Bussell’s meddlesome and cruel advice deserved a very 
different reply from the courteous one it actually received, and, no 
doubt, would have got it, had not the Government, whose rights he 
was trifling with, been one that is now ‘ down in the world,’ and 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 221 

wrestling for lier existence with rivals already too strong for her to 
cojie with.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ Owing to the conduct of Her Majesty’s Government, that por¬ 
tion of the Chamber and of the population which were most hostile 
to British friendship and British commerce were obtaining a ruling 
influence, and the Conservatives in Brazil, who had always been 
friendly to England, were losing their elections upon a cry against 
them which was founded upon the conduct of Her Majesty’s 
Government. The party who were now superseding them announced 
as one item of their programme such commercial arrangements as 
would inflict a heavy blow upon British commerce.”— Mr. Fitzgerald. 

“The correspondence and negotiations were conducted by our 
representatives in a tone and temper which could not possibly lead 
to anything but irritation, ill-feeling, and finally a total estrange¬ 
ment on the part of the Brazilian Government. No man in the 
affairs of common life would have submitted to the disdainful, the 
contemptuous, the rude, I might say the ungentlemanly tone in 
which that correspondence was conducted; and I am not all sur¬ 
prised that it should have produced very great soreness and injury 
in the Brazilian Government.”— Speech in the House of Commons. 

“ One would think, that, under these circumstances, Lord Bussell 
might express his regret, that he should have resorted precipitately 
to reprisals, when, in fact, there was no ground for them, and the 
Brazilian Government was guiltless. But our Secretary seems to be 
too much irritated against his opponents to be capable of so generous 
a course.”— Times. 

“Whatever faults may have been committed by the Brazilian 
Government, our own has, to say the least, exacted quite enough 
compensation and inflicted quite enough indignity.”— Scotsman. 

“In the course of his observations the noble lord attacked, first, 
the Brazilian Government, then the Brazilian nation and their state 
of civilisation; then he attacked the American Minister at Bio ; and, 
finally, he attacked the British merchants in Brazil.”— Speech in the 
House of Lords. 

“In transmitting to Her Britannic Majesty’s Government the 
aforesaid sum of £3,200, for the shipwreck of the ‘ Prince of Wales,’ 
the undersigned declares, in the name of his Government, that this 
payment, thus made to the British Government, is made solely in 
consequence of the illegal and violent proceedings committed upon 


222 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Brazilian ships, in the territorial waters of the empire, and is the 
simple result of force, without in any way implying the admission of 
right or justice on the part of the British Government. Wherefore 
it will never be possible, by this payment, to establish a precedent 
against Brazil or any other maritime nation, inasmuch as the Im¬ 
perial Government does not recognise the right of such act, but, on 
the contrary, most formally and solemnly protests against it and its 
consequences.” 

“We have reason to believe that His Excellency Oommandeur de 
Carvalho Moreira, Minister for Brazil at our Court, in consequence 
of recent occurrences, demanded his passports on Monday last. 
His demand was complied with, and yesterday His Excellency 
received the necessary papers .”—Morning Post. 

“He regretted to say, ho had risen from a perusal of the papers 
with the strong conviction, that those unhappy differences were 
attributable mainly, if not entirely, to the conduct of our diplomatic 
agents in Brazil, the whole of whose conduct had been sanc¬ 
tioned and approved by the noble Earl the Foreign Secretary; that 
our treatment of the Brazilians, from beginning to end, had been in 
the highest degree harsh, overbearing, and unjust, and that we had 
made a most injurious use of our superior power against a State 
comparatively weak, and which was unable to offer anything in 
opposition but a moral resistance .”—Speech in the House of Commons. 

“In proceeding with the question, I have four charges to make 
against the acts of the noble Earl. My first charge is, that he made 
no allowance whatever for the peculiar state of the county, in which 
those events took place. My second charge is, that he abdicated 
his own judgment and responsibility to his subordinates in Brazil. 
I am ready to admit, that, in some instances, the noble Earl has 
been as much sinned against as sinning, but a person in the position 
of the noble Earl is a sinner when he allows himself to be sinned 
against. My third charge against the noble Earl is, the imperious 
style, in which he addressed an ally of Her Majesty. I charge him 
with not having used his personal exertions to settle this question, 
but left it to be settled by his subordinates. And my fourth charge 
against him is, that of having committed illegal and impolitic acts 
when he executed the reprisals; and I hold, that, even if those 
reprisals were justifiable, the manner in which they were executed 
cannot be justified.”— Earl of Malmesbury. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


223 


“ His singular power of saying even tlie riglit thing in the wrong 
way, never deserts the Foreign Secretary. He always goes too far, 
and speaks without warrant .”—Saturday Review. 

11 Englishmen will never quarrel with a Minister for holding tlio 
scale of justice a little awry in their favour. \_The more shame for 
them.~\ But it must only be a little awry. We do not desire to be made 
ridiculous or odious in the eyes of the rest of the world, by an 
extravagant exhibition of arrogance. In the other half of his caso 
against the Brazilians, the Foreign Secretary has considerably over¬ 
stepped this decorous line. Fie has resorted to the extreme remedy 
prescribed by international usage, where a reparation for unques¬ 
tionable wrong is pertinaciously denied; and he has done it in a 
case in which, according to the decision of the King of the Belgians, 
he had not a shadow of ground for complaint.”— lb. 

“We feel the inconvenience of having a Foreign Secretary, who 
contrives to be on snubbing terms with all the allies of England. 
In a troubled time like ours, when the issues of peace and war often 
hang upon an individual decision, it is uncomfortable to be repre¬ 
sented by a Minister who possesses so remarkable a talent for giving 
offence. ’ ’— lb. 

“The Brazilian difficulty will soon be at an end, both parties 
agreeing to abide by the disinterested award of the King of the 
Belgians. He has now given his decision on the side of Brazil; 
and, while we rejoice it will thus be peaceably settled, we hope it 
will be a lesson to Earl Bussell, that he must not in future seek to 
play the bully over states who are in no position to help themselves.” 
—Northern Ensign. 

“We will even venture to repeat, notwithstanding the sneer with 
which Lord Russell has replied to our previous expression of the same 
sentiment, that the inconveniences of an interruption of a great com¬ 
merce ought to go for something, among the considerations which 
should influence the modus operandi of an English Minister.”— 
Times. 


3. The Rope. 

“Mr. Odo Bussell, in presenting the note of his Government to 
Flis Holiness’s Secretary of State, authorised him to make, con¬ 
fidentially, such use of it as he might think fit. The Cardinal 
hastened to reply, that he had no use to make of it, seeing that the 


224 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Pope did not dream the least in the world of quitting Rome. The 
intention of his Eminence was even, we are assured, to maintain 
complete silence in this matter, so as not to give to the proceeding of 
Mr. Oclo Russell an importance which it did not possess .”—French 
Minister. 

“He had received a private letter from Lord Russell, in which 
that Minister expressed his lively regret at seeing, that the Pope was 
not disposed for the moment to accept his propositions, adding, that 
he had reasons to believe that his Holiness would in a very short 
time find himself under the necessity of profiting by them. Cardinal 
Antonelli abstained from making any reply to this new communi¬ 
cation.”— lb. 

“ Lord Russell might just as wisely have proposed to settle the 
American contest by taking lodgings for Mr. Abraham Lincoln in 
Leicester Square .”—Saturday Review. 

“ If we had any other Minister than Earl Russell at the head of 
the Foreign Department of this conntry, we should at once be able 
to declare, that M. Drouyn tie Lhuys had not only been scandalously 
hoaxed, but that he had been led to place himself in a most ridicu¬ 
lous position. With the management of Foreign Affairs, however, 
in the hands of ‘the hero of Reform,’ we can quite believe he has 
been once more fishing in troubled waters, and, in his anxiety 
to make a great catch, lias tumbled in over head and ears, only 
to be drawn out either by his Chief, or some other member 
of the Cabinet, much discomfited and disheartened at his want 
of success in his most recent venture after notoriety .”—liberal 
Paper. 

“We know, that the courage and confidence of the noble Earl, in 
undertaking to surmount any possible difficulty, have been proverbial 
since the days of Sidney Smith. If there be any difficulty of any 
kind, anything calculated to embarrass the statesmen of this or 
any other country, the noble Lord is ready to say, ‘ Come, I will 
settle it at once; I will tell you how to do itand then, without 
even the preliminary apology, which used to be given by a cele¬ 
brated character—‘I hope I don’t intrude’—he offers his advice 
and assistance to any nation he may suppose to stand in need of 
them .”—Earl of Derby. 

“I read the correspondence, I confess, with some feeling of humi¬ 
liation, for I found among it four documents, and I entertained 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 225 

serious doubts wbicb of the four reflected the greatest amount of 
ridicule on British diplomacy.”— Earl of Derby. 

“ A still more startling despatch is that of M. de la Tour 
d’Auvergne, who states, that, during the Christmas fetes , Mr. Odo 
Bussell renewed his proposal to the Pope that he should leave Pome, 
expressing regret, that the offer of England had not been accepted, 
and adding that he had reason to believe his Holiness would very 
shortly find himself forced to profit by it. This is certainly plain 
speaking, and neither the predictions of the British Charge d’Affaires 
nor the doubting tone of M. Drouyn de Lhuys seem to confirm the 
rose-coloured fancies of the Emperor.”— Times. 

“ If the wonderful project of installing the Pope at Malta had, by 
some inconceivable chance, been realized, so capricious a blunder 
might, perhaps, have been fatal to the Government. An idle con¬ 
versation and an abortive crotchet may provoke Parliament to laughter 
but not to indignant censure.”— Saturday Review. 

“We are all quite familiar, in this country, with the fussy love of 
intervening, and interfering, and intermeddling, which always cha¬ 
racterises our foreign policy, when it is under Lord Palmerston’s 
influence, and never more signally than when it is entrusted to the 
hands of Lord Bussell. Hence we have no difficidty in placing a 
charitable, though, perhaps, rather a contemptuous construction on 
the grotesque despatches which have been published in explanation 
of his lordship’s invitation to the Pope to take refuge in Malta. 
But we are not surprised that foreign journals, who do not know 
Lord Bussell so well as we do, should see in the whole affair a deep- 
laid scheme of treachery.”— John Bull. 

4. Greece and the Ionian Islands. 

The noble Secretary’s policy, and that of the noble Premier, in 
reference to the Ionian Protectorate, seem to be so much at variance, 
as to indicate a smouldering revival of that jealousy, and rivalship, 
which, at one time, sundered and estranged them, until their party 
interests compelled them to coalesce. 

“I desire emphatically to protest against the language reported to 
have been used by the noble Viscount at the head of the Government 
in another place, to the effect that, as it is not a proposal to cede any 
part of the British possessions, but only the protectorate of those 
islands, Parliament had nothing to do with it. I do not think I 

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226 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


sliall liear that language repeated in this House. Fortunately the 
noble Earl the Foreign Secretary gave us notice last night, that he 
does not consider it any part of his business to vindicate the course 
which the noble Viscount at the head of the Treasury may think fit 
to pursue, and, knowing the noble Earl’s antecedents, I can hardly 
doubt his entire sincerity in making that statement, or that it will 
be adhered to with the most scrupulous fidelity.”— Earl of Derby. 

“I suppose there is no man insane enough to believe, that we 
should have spent enormous sums in the fortification of that post, 
and that we should have gone to the expense of the military pro¬ 
tection of those islands, unless we had some direct interest in doing 
so. That we should have done so for pure love of the Ionian people, 
is a supposition so absurd, that, unless it had been seriously put 
forward by the noble Earl, I should not have thought it possible that it 
would enter into the imagination of any statesman .”— lb. 

‘ ‘ The Government acted most disrespectfully towards a Prince 
of the Boyal family, by allowing him to stand for some time as 
apparently a real candidate for the Throne of Greece, though in 
fact they were putting him forward as a sort of dummy or man of 
straw—an act which certainly was not respectful to the Crown.”— 
Lord Malmesbury. 

“The Earl of Derby observed that the cession of the Ionian 
Islands to Greece was one of the most gratuitous weakenings of this 
country for the power of other countries he ever remembered.” 

“ Lord Bussell’s antics have become intolerable. He is the 
laughing-stock even of his own party.”— Private Letter. 

11 What his noble friend did say—a charge to which Her Majesty’s 
Government had justly laid themselves open—was that they had 
played fast and loose with the people of Greece, and had led them 
to entertain exaggerated expectations, which they found it impossible 
to fulfil.”— Earl of Derby. 

11 The noble Earl, anxious that his labours should not be in vain, 
and convinced that it was his especial duty to find a successor to the 
Greek Throne, continued to stand at the door of the Foreign Office 
with the Almanack de Gotha in his hand, determined to find in that 
volume some one who would accept the vacant crowrn”— Earl of 
Malmesbury. 

u Her Majesty’s Government thought it consistent with their duty 
to the Greek people, to allow them to pursue an ignis fatuus , which 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 227 

could only lure them into error, and lead tliem hopelessly astray. 
If such were the opinions of the noble Earl, then he had very extra¬ 
ordinary notions of the duty of a British Secretary of State.”— 
Earl of Derby. 

“Amongst the various silly acts by which Earl Bussells adminis¬ 
tration of the department of Foreign Affairs has been rendered 
notorious, his attempt to direct the revolution that drove King Otho 
from the Greek throne is decidedly the silliest. There is not a step 
taken by him in this affair that is not discreditable to him as a 
diplomatist and statesman, and humiliating to England as a great 
Power.”— Press. 

‘ 1 Earl Bussell seems to have imagined that the revolution itself 
did not constitute a sufficient difficulty for these adventurous and 
excitable people, so he threw another ingredient into the cauldron, 
in the shape of the surrender of the Ionian Islands. The conse¬ 
quences that all experienced politicians dreaded, may be traced in 
recent events.”— lb. 

11 During the last recess his noble friend the Foreign Secretary 
thought it right to enter into communication with two foreign Govern¬ 
ments, on two most important points, and he did so in a manner to 
render difficult questions still more difficult.”— Speech in the House of 
Lords. 

“ The noble Earl has always been { led willingly ’ into diplomatic 
error; the inexorable Fates make him invariably wrong; his career 
is an unrivalled and unique example of injurious interference and 
illogical remonstrance. ”— Press. 

5. America. 

“ Last session there was a motion in the House of Lords against 
the blockade, and the Foreign Secretary made a speech in which 
ho showed that the blockade was very effective, and he concluded 
his remarks in a very careless manner, as if he were really not 
thinking of what he was saying, by stating, that he hoped in a few 
months the North would consent to the independence of the South, 
when, of course, this country would wish prosperity to both States. 
Well, what was the effect of this in Lancashire ? Everybody there 
thinks a Foreign Secretary is a most profound statesman, and has 
everything written down in the Foreign Office ; but on this question 
Lord Bussell knew nothing, and that was exactly the position of 

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228 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAFARTES ? 


all the rest of us. He was not, however, content with saying 
nothing; he said that, which people in Lancashire hoped indicated, 
that he knew a great deal. The consequence was, that, when the 
news reached the Exchange at Manchester, everybody wanted to sell, 
and no one to buy. I know a man who was just then taking stock 
with a partner whom he was then about to leave, and the effect of 
that speech was, by a stroke of the pen, to clejireciate his share of 
the business by more than £2,000.”— Mr. Bright. 

“ In one breath, he says that British merchantmen shall be protected 
in neutral waters; in another, that it is perfectly justifiable, on the 
part of a Yankee cruiser, to stop any of our ships, no matter where 
they may be met with, provided there be a suspicion that the desti¬ 
nation of such ships be simulated.”— Press. 

11 One would suppose that any man with the feelings, or, he would 
say, with the prejudices, of an Englishman, would have at once ex¬ 
pressed some indignation or disgust at such unheard-of treatment of 
his countrymen; but the noble earl merely expressed his surprise at 
the facts laid before him .”—Speech in the House of Lords. 

11 When we reflect upon all that he has to endure at the hands of 
Mr. Seward, it is hard to refuse him the consolation of at least the 
show of energy and valour in other quarters .”—Saturday Review. 

6. China. 

“ I take the liberty of pointing out, from personal knowledge, 
that in place of the China merchants as a body being ‘ perfectly 
satisfied with the policy pursued by Her Majesty’s Government,’ 
as maintained by Mr. Gregson, they are, almost to a man, dissatis¬ 
fied with the policy that authorises British officers and men to carry 
arms in the employ of the Chinese Government; the}' consider such 
policy to be fraught with the most dangerous consequences, and one 
far more likely to prejudice than benefit the trade between the 
countries. ’ ’—English Merchant. 

7. Sir James Hudson. 

The flagrant and flagitious nepotism, in virtue of which a most 
respected and meritorious public servant has been injured and 
insulted, has raised throughout the length and breadth of the 
country an unanimous and unequivocal feeling of disapproval and 
disgust. 


I 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 229 

Pour leur seul intcret ils se montrent habiles. 

Voltaire. 

“ A letter from Turin, from a French source, speaks of a painful 
sensation caused there by the news of Sir James Hudson’s recall, a 
sensation which the writer attributes to the numerous friends he 
possesses, and to the great influence he enjoys in Italy. The writer 
contradicts a reports which had been spread that Sir James’s retire¬ 
ment had been a voluntary act, and says that he was offered the 
embassy at Constantinople, but refused it, and intends to fix his 
abode at Turin.”— Times. 

“In spite of the denial of the Ministerial papers, there can 
scarcely be any doubt that the retirement of Sir James Hudson has 
been forced upon him .”—Saturday Review. 

“ Lord Russell has chosen to bring this about, and he will do it 
with perfect impunity. There is no redress for the grievances of 
diplomatic servants.”—■/ b. 

“ The unfortunate appointment of Mr. Elliot gives this business 
the character of one of those family jobs which for years have been 
among the leading weaknesses of Lord Russell.”— lb. 

“ He is an Elliot, and as the patron of all possible Elliots is 
in office, he is put into one of the most important diplomatic 
posts, and Sir James Hudson is ordered to make way for him.” 
—Ib. 

“All the Elliots who are ready for promotion ought, if possible, 
to be placed out before the end of September.”— Ib. 

“ Only by degrees will the difference force itself upon the Italians, 
between having Lord Russell’s relative at Turin, and having, as the 
representative of England, a bold and practised diplomatist of the 
first class.”— Ib. 

“The evening papers announce that public subscriptions have 
been opened to offer a testimonial to Sir James Hudson as a token 
of Italian gratitude.”— Times. 

“ The only retribution which Lord Russell will incur, will be the 
stain which, in his old age, he has chosen to attach to his memory, 
and the damage he has inflicted on the political party which he has 
zealously served for so many years. An alternation of gaining 
power by adopting popular opinions, and of losing power by auda¬ 
cious family jobs, will be the history of that great Whig clique 
which has lived during the political life of Lord Russell, and which 


230 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


will probably die out when he too is sent into retirement by the 
hand that there is no resisting .”—Saturday Review. 

11 It is impossible that the universal opinion of his friends in Italy 
should be mistaken; nor would he allow the deep indignation and 
ardent regret freely expressed in Turin to continue, when a word 
from him would show that all those who know him best are in error, 
and that he really prefers—at a critical moment, and when he has 
just given, by his management of the Treaty of Commerce, a fresh 
proof of what he can do for England and Italy—to retire into the 
inactivity and obscurity of private life. Very probably, this retire¬ 
ment did not come so suddenly on him as it did on the public, and 
his previous relations with Lord Bussell may have convinced him 
that his position at Turin was no longer tenable.”— lb. 

“It was Sir James Hudson that protected the Italians from the 
cold, sickening feeling of being left alone in the world at the mercy 
of a big, bullying, grasping ally.”— lb. 

“It is long since the change of a diplomatic agent at any Court 
has caused so much stir and comment, as the substitution of Mr. 
Elliot for Sir James Hudson. Nearly all the principal continental 
papers have had more or less to say about it, and although some of 
them may not be sorry to see so experienced and sagacious a British 
Minister, at so important a place as Turin, replaced by a compara¬ 
tively untried man, the number of those which express satisfaction, 
or remark unfavourably on the outgoing envoy, is small compared 
to those who impute blame to our Foreign Secretary for pensioning, 
instead of retaining, a valuable public servant. Concerning his 
motive in so doing, few of them seem to entertain a doubt.”— 
Times. 

“It is maintained, as you know, and with some appearance of 
reason, that nepotism has a great deal to say to the nominations of 
the British Minister for Foreign Affairs .”—French Paper. 

II voit la servitude ou le roi s’est soumis, 

Et connoit d’autant mieux les dangereux amis. 

Corneille. 

Ah, je vous parle ainsi, dans ce peril extreme, 

Moins en Ambassadeur qu’en homme qui vous aime, 

Et qui, touche du sort que vous vous prepares, 

Tache a rompre le cours des maux ou vous courez.— lb. 


r 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE. BONAPARTES ? 

Montrons leur hautement, que nous ayons des yeux 
Et d’un si rude joug afiranchissons ces lieux, 

Puisqu’a leurs interets, tout ce qu’ils font s’applique, 
Que leur vainc amitie cede a leur politique, 

Soyons a notre tour do leur grandeur jaloux, 

Et comtne ils font pour eux, faisons aussi pour nous.— lb. 

Si dans Rome avilie un Empereur brutal 
Des faisceaux d’un Consul honora son cbeval, 

T1 fut cent fois moms fou que ceux dort 1’imprudence 
Dans des indignes mains a mis sa confiance. 

Voltaire. 


231 




232 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


VI.— Italy. 

No country, perhaps, has more cause than Italy, to abhor the 
memory of the Man of Brumaire, and to abjure the machinations 
of the Man of December. The former parcelled out the Peninsula 
amongst his relatives or retainers, according to his own whims or 
interests, as if it had been the time-honoured heritage of the Bona- 
partes. He was as much viceroy over his kings as he w T as king 
over his viceroys. He impoverished the population, by his exac¬ 
tions, and robbed every city of those treasures of art, which con¬ 
stituted their pleasure and their pride. Of the latter, it was, some 
time ago, most truly and tersely observed, that “he incurred a heavy 
responsibility to his contemporaries and to posterity by the policy 
which, during the last three years, he has observed towards Italy. 
He came forth as her champion , when no positive duty called for his inter¬ 
ference. He aroused the hopes, and stimulated the desire for free¬ 
dom from foreign intervention, of 24 millions of men. He is 
INDIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OVERTHROW OF THE GRAND 

Dukes, for the expulsion of the King of Naples, and for 

THE LOSS BY THE POPE OF THE FAIREST PART OF HIS DOMINIONS. 

He has seen fit, besides, to try Italy in the most grievous manner—to 
test her constancy by fire and sword, by the impatience of hope 
long deferred, and by the presence of the Neapolitan pretender (??) 
and the miscreants, whom he has lured to promote his cause by fire 
and sword.* For a long’while he deferred the recognition of the very 
power he had created, and he intervened directly to prevent the 
capture of Gaeta. Were it not for his occupation of Italian terri¬ 
tory, Garibaldi might have ended his days in honour and glory, and 

* According, however, to a distinguished Roman Catholic prelate, it must he 
admitted, that Rome, at all events, is in a happy state of exemption from all the 
evils which affect the rest of Italy :— 

“In the meantime the Pope has been able to enjoy the blessings of peace in his 
capital, and to preserve Rome from the evils which afflict all the regions of Italy 
that have fallen under the revolutionary sway of the Sardinian Government.”— 
Archbishop Cullen. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


233 


Italy have been spared the cruelty of turning her arms against her 
benefactor. Does not the Emperor of the French think that 
he has done ill enough ? Has not the time arrived when an end 
should be put to this inexplicable and vacillating policy ? Has not 
every device, which can test the constancy, we will not say which 
can wear out the patience, of the Italian people been tried to the 
utmost ? And is it not time that this unmerited torture of three 
years should come to a close ? ”— Times. 

“As for Louis Napoleon, who is prematurely exclaiming 1 finis 
comadia ’ in one of his journals more abject than the rest, he may 
depend upon it, that his day of reckoning will yet arrive, when his 
murders, his perjuries, and other offences against high Heaven 
must all be atoned for. Meanwhile, let him feel, that the dagger of 
every true Italian patriot is armed against him; and if swift retri¬ 
bution does not strike him down from the seat he has usurped, let 
it be the resolute task of every Power in Europe to put an end for 
once and for ever to the troubles of which he and his execrable 
family are, and would ever be, the authors.”— Liberal Paper. 

The Man of December’s motto for himself is, “Get, Get” (si 
possis recte , si non quocumque mo do), and that which he imposes upon 
all the world besides is, “ Give, give.” 

“Point d’argent, point de Suisse, point de province promise, point 
d’armee Napoleonienne. ’ ’ 

“Ne me donnerez-vous point quelque a compte sur les auriers 
que je vais cueillir ? ”— Marmontel. 

He asserts truly, that he made war in Italy for an idea—but that 
idea, and indeed the only one upon which he ever acts, is the “ Idee 
Napoleonienne He seizes everything, and surrenders nothing; he 
keeps direct possession of Pome, and retains Lombardy and the 
greater part of Central Italy (under the satrapy of his Piedmontese 
prefect), whilst he audaciously prevents the resumption of their ter¬ 
ritories on the part of the exiled princes, of whose restoration 
Lombardy was the stipulated price.* Here he adopts the “ Idee 

* The entire bargain is as completely null and void, as would be the acquisition 
of a palace for a stipulated sum, if the dishonest speculator, who, by force or fraud, 
obtained possession, refused afterwards to pay the purchase-money. Ananias was 
punished for “ keeping back part of the pricebut his Imperial disciple has with 
impunity retained the whole. He has u lied both unto men and unto God. 


234 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Falstaffienne 5 ’—“ Oil, I do not like that paying back—it is a double 
labour.” He was at pains to expel legitimate sovereigns, who pos¬ 
sessed their dominions by lawful hereditary descent, and has been 
all along (though hitherto unsuccessfully) endeavouring to recon¬ 
struct the territorial arrangements of Italy according to his uncle’s 
“idea,” who inflicted far and wide throughout its precincts the 
ignominy of Bonapartist domination. The amount of his retaining 
fee was settled, before the great physician crossed the Alps, between 
him and his astute and ambitious tool, Cavour, who, for Pied¬ 
montese purposes, surrendered prospectively the keys of Italy into 
his hands, and participated in the guilt of that perfidy and perjury, 
by which Europe was so scandalously imposed upon. 

‘ 1 The first invasion of Italy by France was such a manifest 
infraction of international law, that the other Grovernments of 
Europe were bound to discountenance it. We were enabled to shame 
France by our example into a recognition of the new kingdom of 
Italy; and it was thus that we were able to hold fast to the tribunal 
of public opinion one who has been the despoiler , and would otherwise be 
now the Dictator of Italy. At that tribunal, more powerful in the 
present day than fleets and armies, we have compelled him to vin¬ 
dicate the policy and morality of his acts ; and we have not left him 
the choice whether he would respect public opinion or defy it. The 
great military ruler of France has maintained greater armies, 
set more armies in motion, desolated more hearths and homes, and 
done more to wring the hearts and revolt the principles of true 
lovers of peace, than any man who has lived since the days of the 
First Napoleon.”— Speech in House of Commons. 

“ The seizure of Savoy was a very costly affair for all the parties 
concerned. It was costly to Sardinia, for it despoiled her of her 
ancient territory; and the deception, dissimulation, and fraud 
towards Europe, which characterised that proceeding, cast a stain not 
easy to be removed, on the memory of the Minister at that time. 
It was more costly to Franee.. The Emperor of France when he 
invaded Italy had, if he were sincere, a great work before him. 
Europe would have forgiven the illegality of the first invasion, in 
consideration of his sincerity and success in giving new life to Italy, 
in striking the chains off that noble victim, raising her to a place in 
the sisterhood of nations, and bidding her go forth free, strong, 
progressive, and self-reliant, with a new future before her. He 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


235 


would have gained the gratitude of Italy, the respect of Europe, and 
would have contributed to the true greatness and glory of France in 
a manner that would have rallied some morality round him to 
strengthen his throne and perpetuate his dynasty. But he missed his 
chance. He preferred the short-sighted gratification of a selfish but 
worthless aggrandisement, and now after ten years he still reigns, 
but he has achieved no greatness, and made no friends. He still 
reigns, as some say, the accidental monarch of the day, but he has 
made no provision for the future. But the real cost was to England. 
The annexation of Savoy led to the rupture of the alliance with 
France, and compelled us to take up a position of antagonism, 
and invest in the munitions of war in order that we might go 
into council with France as an equal Power, or, that we might 
go into joint action with France as a controlling or corrective 
Power.'’ 


II est ainsi bati, quand un sujet l’enflamme, 

L’impossibility disparait a son ame, 

Combien fait il de yoeux, combien perd il de pas, 

Pour plaire a son armee, et augmenter lour gloire. 

“ Poussons jusqu’au Rhin nos 6 tats; 

Retablissons enfin a Naples lcs Murats, 

De notre oncle partout renouvelons 1’histone,'’ 

Tout cela, c’cst la mer a boire ! 

Rien a cet homme ne suffit, 

Il faudrait pour fournir aux plans de son esprit, 

Mcttre 1’Europe en fers ; eacor loin d’y suffire, 

Lcs Indes etl’Egypte k lui demeurcraient, 

Qualre ou cinq Attilas, bout a bout, ne pourraient 
Mettre a fin ce qu’un seul desire. 

La Fontaine. 

It is obviously his design to place a Bonaparte at the head of 
affairs at Florence and at Naples, and that his son, as in the case of 
the first Ahriman, should become king of Pome. As he is fond of 
showy and sudden displays of power, he will, probably, ere long 
find a pretence for installing his “fat friend” and cousin at 
Naples— 

Je vous veux mettre aujourd’hui sur le trone ; 

Prenez dix regimens, gardcz les avec soin, 

Pour vous en seryir au besoin. 


236 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Murat. 

II faut pour nos projets tout l’argent que la terre, 

Aura depuis plus de cent ans 

Produit pour 1’usage des gens ; 

Car la chacun se vend—dans sa cave il enserre 
L’argent et l’honneur a la fois— 

“ Plus de Bourbon ”—il perd leurs voix, 

Si tot qu’ils gagnent l’or, le seul fut de leurs peines. 

La Fontaine. 

“The Belgian Independance publishes the text of a letter, which 
purports to have been addressed by Prince Lucien Murat to the 
unknown ‘ dear prince ’ in Naples, who has been the channel of his 
previous communications with the Neapolitans. The Murat pre¬ 
tender professes to have received information of the progress which 
his cause is making, and in exalting his own claims, he is equally 
bitter upon the ‘ Bourbon faction ’ and the ‘ Piedmontese sect.’ 
By relying on moral force, he is persuaded, he says, that he and his 
party will yet obtain the victory in the Two Sicilies. 

“ ‘ Chateau de Bouzenval, Nov., 1862. 

“ ‘ Dear Prince,—I receive from various quarters regular infor¬ 
mation as to the progress made by our party in public opinion. I 
am greatly delighted at it, because the preponderance we are 
acquiring is a victory exclusively moral and free from stain, and 
therefore superior to the lucky but bloody excesses of the Bourbon 
bands; superior, too, to the Piedmontese domination, relying on 
arms and despotism. Let, then, this moral preponderance, my dear 
Prince, be our chief aim. While the fallen King defends the cause 
of so-called legitimacy, while Piedmont, the pretended champion of 
liberty, maintains itself by martial law, let us set the example of 
an association having nothing in view but to defend by every means 
—by every legal means—the right and the interest of the Kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies.’ ”— Times. 

“ The French Emperor is, in one point of view, fortunate in his 
cousins. Prince Napoleon and Prince Lucien Murat, if not orna¬ 
mental, are decidedly useful appendages to the Napoleonic dynasty. 
Through them the august Head of the House can get things said, 
with a certain ^wm-Imperial authority, which it is convenient for 
his purposes that somebody should say, but which it may also be 
convenient for his Government to be able to unsay and disavow. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


237 


When he wishes to try a doubtful experiment on French or 
European opinion—to familiarise people’s minds with some idea or 
project, which it may hereafter be expedient to carry out, but to 
which he is unprepared to commit himself past recall—one of the 
cousins may always be depended upon to perform the humble but 
necessary function .”—Saturday Review. 

“If it is considered advantageous to sow discord in the peninsula, 
to stir up expiring provincial jealousies, which may impede or undo 
the work of national consolidation, to resuscitate the insidious project 
of a Federation, and to insult or worry a too independent ally by 
threatening to split his dominions in two, Prince Lucien Murat is 
the man. All that is required is to let him put forth one of his 
periodical manifestoes to the ‘ Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.’ It 
can do no harm, and may do good. The Prince is not the Emperor, 
and can always be disavowed, if necessary. At the same time, an 
Imperial Prince is an Imperial Prince, and a Napoleonic pretender 
to an Italian throne is a personage who may, in certain conceivable 
contingencies, be found a useful piece on the political chess-board. 
Napoleon III. really would be at a great loss without his august 
relatives. For a potentate with a number of irons always in the 
fire, it is impossible to exaggerate the convenience of an arrange¬ 
ment, which enables him to go great lengths in any given direc¬ 
tion, while retaining the option of a safe and dignified retreat.” 
—Ib. 

“Apart from the sinister purpose indicated by the Imperial 
toleration of an avowed pretender to an Italian crown, the claim of 
Prince Lucien to the ‘ Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ’ can only bo 
regarded as a singularly silly jest. A more ludicrous travesty of 
legitimacy was never perpetrated than in the pretensions of the son 
of Joachim Murat to be King of the Two Sicilies. As it happens, 
there is no ‘Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,’ to begin with. If there 
were, the throne is not vacant. And if the throne were vacant, 
there is not the smallest reason to believe, that any descendant of 
Joachim would be asked to occupy it. For cool unadulterated 
impudence, the manifestoes, which issue every now and then from 
the Chateau de Bouzenval, are really unrivalled.”— Ib. 

“ This perseverance of Prince Murat in his aspiration to the 
throne, which once was his father’s, is a remarkable phenomenon. 
Nothing can certainly be more unfathomable than the ambition of a 


238 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


man, with no matter how few drops of Bonaparte blood in his veins.” 
—Liberal Pa/per. 

“ In the meanwhile, we may be allowed to wonder, that an Emperor, 
who understands his epoch, should deem it judicious to insult and 
exasperate Italy by conniving at open attacks on the unity and 
independence of the national monarchy, which he has ostensibly 
recognised. It is easy to say, that he has never endorsed the claims 
of a foolish and conceited pretender to the throne of a kingdom 
which has ceased to exist; but no one will believe, that he has not 
a purpose to serve in permitting an agitation, which a word from 
him would suppress. The very least that can be inferred from these 
Muratist manifestoes is, that it is consistent with the policy of 
Napoleon III. to keep Italy, if he can, weak and divided, and that 
he would view with entire complacency a revolution, which robbed 
Victor Emmanuel of half his dominions. It is singular, that a ruler, 
whom the world is wont to credit with more than average sagacity, 
should think it to his advantage to renounce whatever cl dm he may 
have established on the gratitude and goodwill of the Italian 
people. ’ ’—Saturday Review. 

“Naples cannot remain annexed to Piedmont by violence after 
having been conquered by surprise. Her fusion in the unity is the 
abdication of her nationality. Who governs in the ancient kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies since the loss of its autonomy? It is not the 
Neapolitans. Everything is Piedmontese. Ten millions of men, 
forming one of the finest parts of Italy, born to be soldiers, sailors, 
and citizens, who should be the free subjects of a national monarchy, 
consider themselves as the conquered subjects of a foreign domi¬ 
nation. At the present time there is very little illusion on this 
subject at Turin .”—French Paper . 

“Victor Emmanuel having found it impossible to ‘denationalize’ 
the Neapolitans, his true interest, says the solemn voice of the 
Lagueronniere oracle, is ‘to leave the country with honour, after 
having entered it without right and without foresight.’ ” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


239 


VII.— Duplicity and Vacillation of the Man of December . 

“Tout le monde a remarque le gout qu’ont les cliats de s’arreter, 
et de flaner entre les deux battants d’une porte entre baillee.”— 
Victor Hugo. 

“Italy for the Italians,” is the war-cry of Italian liberalism. 
“ Italy for the Bonapartes,” is the watchword at the Tuileries. The 
Man of Brumaire was his own god, and he is now the only object 
of the Man of December’s idolatry. lie is as insincere in his pro¬ 
fessions of magnanimity and disinterestedness as he is intent upon 
the attainment of his undoubted, though unavowed object, the 
maintenance and increase of French domination throughout the 
peninsula. He has, in reference to all his devices and designs, 
been wayward and wavering, according as he imagined, that he 
could further his own secret ends by aiding the Pope, or by abetting 
Piedmont. European monarchs, ministers, and politicians of every 
sect and system, have been deceived and duped by his changeable¬ 
ness and chicanery. 

“Napoleon III. was bent on wrenching Italy from Austrian 
hands—not with a view to leave Italy to her own devices, however, 
but to allow her as much life and freedom and union and separate 
existence as would make her a chief satellite in the great Imperial 
system, and no more.”— Liberal Paper. 

Trovo per tutto 

Qualche scoglio a temer. Scelgo, mi pento, 

Poi d’essermi pentito 
Mi ritorno a pentir; mi stanco intanto 
Nel lungo dubitar, tal che dal male 
II ben piu non distinguo ; alfin mi veggio 
Stretto dal tempo, e mi risolvo al peggio. 

Metastasio. 

Ne miei pension 
Dubbioso, irresolute, or questo, or quello 
Pis cuso, eleggo e mille faccio, o millc 
Cangiamenti in un ora. A sceglier vengo, 

E sono incerto ancora . . . potrai 
Promettcr sempre, c non risolver mai. — Jb. 


240 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE EONAPARTES ? 


Se parlo mi condanno, e se non parlo. 

Metastasio. 

10 non intendo 

Se siano i detti tnoi fiuti o veraci; 

Eccedi e quando parli c quando taci.— lb. 

“It is the privilege of French Imperialism to make oracular 
announcements.”— St. James’s Chronicle. 

Morny. 

Che fai ? Che pensi ? 

Che ragioni fra te ? Quei passi incerti, 

Quelle nel profever voci interrotte, 

Che voglion dir ? 

Ad un partito 
Convien pure appligliarsi. 

Louis Napoleon. 

11 piu securo 

E’l non prenderne alcuno. Agio bisogna 
A ricompor le sconcertate file 
Della trama impedita.— lb. 

Gli enigmi'artific-iosi 

Semhrano arcani ascosi. Allor che il volgo 
GP intende men, piu volentier gli adora; 

Figurando si in essi 

Quel che tcmc, o desia, ma sempre in vano, 

Che v’e spesso 1’enigma, e non l’arcano.— lb. 

Ormai son stanco 

De finger piu, de tremar sempre ? Io voglio 

Cercare oggi una via 

D’uscir de tan to angustic.— lb. 

Morny. 

Queste promesse 
Mille volte facesti, e mille* volte 
TornastLo vacillar.— lb. 

La Gueronniere. 

These forked tricks, I understand ’em not. 

Would he_ would tell us whom he loves or hates, 

That we might’follow without fear or doubt. 

Ben Jonson. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


241 


‘Louis Napoleon. 

As deeply to effect what we intend, 

As closely to conceal what we impart. 

Siiakspeare. 

11 But there is every reason to suppose, that the Emperor will not 
make up his mind, until he is driven by sheer necessity to act; and 
then he will treat himself to as long a spell of what is probably 
his greatest intellectual enjoyment—that of keeping a difficulty 
before his mind, which he might solve if he pleased.”— Saturday 
Review. 

<£ Tlie Emperor has, if the world is not mistaken, no further 
policy about Home than to see what happens, and keep every one 
waiting, anxious and submissive, as long as possible. Even this 
neutrality of a slow, wavering mind is worth something.”— lb. 

“ There is no one who is not acquainted with, and indignant at, the 
increasing efforts to keep Southern Italy in a state of confusion and 
uncertainty. The intervention at Gaeta; the tardy recognition 
of what had been effected in Italy; the continued occupation of 
Home, and the virtual division of Italy into north and south; the 
indirect support of brigandage; the persevering action of French 
agents in criticising and blaming the new Government, thus creating 
elements of discontent; the extensive distribution of the celebrated 
letter of Murat during the spring and summer, a copy of which 
having been presented at the French Consulate, an underling 
observed, that vast numbers were in circulation; the flutter of ex¬ 
pectation on the occasion of the Garibaldian movement; and, lastly, 
the letter of Lagucronniere, for which he, of course, alone is 
responsible,—all plainly indicate, that the Imperial plans are un¬ 
changed, and that Victor Emmanuel’s Government has been wil¬ 
lingly or unwillingly hoodwinked. No one, who considers attentively 
the history of the last five years, and the cruel reticence of the 
Emperor at present, can believe, that there is the slightest intention 
to abandon Eome, or refrain from approving the honest instincts of 
Garibaldi, at the same time that he condemns his criminal and ill- 
judged enterprise. ’ ’— Times. 

“The shameful duplicity of the Government with regard to the 
Koman question continues.”— Liberal Paper. 

“Imperialism, being an immoral institution, thinks much of 


242 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 

advantages, and is regardless of means. 1 So the end’s gained, what 
signifies the route ?’ is its motto.”— Liberal Paper . 

“Napoleon, in the meanwhile, remains at Rome. There is no 
force of public opinion to drive him from his position. Friends and 
enemies equally supply him with unanswerable reasons to do pre¬ 
cisely as his own heart prompts him. The timid and silent bigotry 
of an exalted lady, the furious rant of that Ultramontane party, 
which clothes its political designs under religious pretences, the 
jealous, rancorous feeling of the French nation, which counts as its 
own loss every gain of its neighbours—all contribute to justify, in 
the eyes of a large party in France, that occupation of Rome which 
Napoleon looks upon as the lever wherewith to move Italy and the 
world. No strength of human reasoning will ever drive from 
Napoleon’s mind the fixed idea that Rome is Italy.”— Times. 

“ The benefits, which Imperialism obtains by its shuffling conduct, 
are, that it avoids a rupture with the liberal and revolutionary 
parties, and prevents Italy from going wild with despair; and that 
by turning the attention of the French people abroad, it does not 
permit them to reflect on their degraded political position at Rome. 
—Ib. 

“It is said, that, in the solution of the Italian question put 
forth by Laguerronniere, par ordre , the Two Sicilies are set apart 

to King -. No name is given. This circumstance has been 

much remarked, and has led to suspicions, that the Emperor intends 
to patronise the intrigues by which his cousin Murat has for a long 
time past tried and is still trying to secure the crown of that king¬ 
dom—‘ my birthright,’ as Murat calls it.”— Ib. 

“Many think, that the disorder created by Garibaldi in the South 
is an ill-wind which, if it blows nobody good, marvellously, how¬ 
ever, answers Napoleon’s purpose; for if it could only be clearly 
proved to the world, that Sicily is in a hopeless state of anarchy, and 
if the disorder were to be communicated to the adjacent mainland, 
the Emperor would consider himself entitled to act as Great Provost 
and Policeman of Europe, and justified to interfere, at Naples at 
least, if not in Palermo—an interference, which would put an end 
to that Italian unity, against which he, with the Pope and 
Francis II. and Chiavone, has been so long, and, as yet, so un¬ 
successfully struggling. That he will further be foiled in all his 
attempts to that effect is the prayer and hope—it is matter of faith 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


243 


with, all good Italians; but in the meanwhile many think, that 
his intentions bode no good to the future of Italy, and that 
Pepoli could only add to spoil a good cause were he to undertake to 
advocate it.”— Times. 

“I always thought, that Napoleon III. was fain to perpetuate 
brigandage and other disorders in Naples, to open for himself a way 
to interference. Unless he had Naples, he felt that he must give up 
Rome, and Rome and the Pope were tools of his policy with which 
ho would never willingly part. He might, perhaps, never have 
carried his point had not Garibaldi and Ratazzi, consciously or un¬ 
consciously, played into his hands as they do.”— lb. 

“ A Muratist Committee has been discovered in this city. The 
police have made several arrests, and seized some important 
documents, among which is an autograph letter of Prince Murat.” 

.*—Scotch Paper. 

“M. de Lagueronniere is a gentleman morally and intellectually 
incapable of persiflage , or we should have suspected him of a little 
cruel bantering. The Pope and Cardinals with their diminished 
revenues, the Monsignori out of place, and the Papal Generals 
without men to command or pay to receive, are expected to console 
themselves for the loss of substantial scudi by the knowledge that 
the mission at the Marquesas is most flourishing, and that the 
Cochin Chinese have begun to baptize their infants. It is as bad as 
the Pirst Napoleon’s remark to Pius YII., that his kingdom was not 
of this world.”— Times. 

“All this the Emperor sees, and has been seeing all this time, 
much more clearly than I do; but it pleases him to trifle with the 
Italians , to toy with the Pope , to mystify Europe , to give the world 
food for talk while he carries his own point, which is simply to gain 
time. Strange to say, he obtains his intent; men listen to him with 
gaping mouths ; they read his notes again and again; they twist and 
torture their sense, cudgel their brains to construe his meaning, to 
make out his purpose. There are men in Italy, even among those 
who are by no means partial to Napoleon III., who take the 
‘elaborate proof by the Emperor that he ought to leave Rome,’ as 
a plain intimation that he has a ‘present intention of so doing.’ 
For my own part, I believe, had lie ever harboured a thought about 
withdrawing from Rome, he would have done it long ago.”— Liberal 
Paper. 

Q 2 


244 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

“ What, however, renders this explanation so inexplicable, and 
this candid appeal so dark and perplexing’, is, that all agree that, 
whatever it may mean, it does not mean the conclusion to which it 
logically points. The Court of Home and all the French papers 
and we must add ourselves to the list—certainly have no belief that 
this elaborate proof by the Emperor that he ought to leave Home is 
intended to intimate to the world that he has the slightest present 
intention of so doing.”— Times. 

“After long hesitation, and after being alternately flattered and 
denounced by both parties to the dispute, the Emperor informs both 
that he will preserve the actual situation. What is past must be 
accepted. The Pope must not expect that French arms will regain 
for him the Homagna or Umbria, or that he is again to have the 
Sovereigns of Naples and Tuscany as neighbours. He must give 
up, if ever he entertained it, the ambitious dream of sitting as 
President of a Confederate Italy. Italy will remain a kingdom, as 
it has been made by the skill of its statesmen and the courage of its 
people. Home, as the Papal city, must be the capital of one of the 
pettiest of States, too weak to stand without assistance, if even it 
were freed from its 20 millions of enemies, and too poor to keep up 
the army and pay for the costly pomp of the Holy See. But, such 
as it is, Napoleon intends to preserve it. The latest phase of the 
Imperial mind gives the victory for a time to the priestly party.”— 
lb. 

“ France is bent not only on forcing Pius IX. down the throats of 
the Italians; she is also determined to undo Gfaribaldi and Cavour’s 
work in the South, to force Naples asunder, to split Italy into three 
Italies. The unity of the peninsula was always objectionable to the 
Emperor Napoleon. He allowed it to take place, bore with it, 
acknowledged it, but always under protest. In his heart of hearts 
he still opposes it—hates it—revolts against it; it upsets all his 
calculations, baffles all his plans, confounds all his theories; it 
breaks the very prestige of his omniscience and omnipotence. 
What! shall the Italians form one country and one nation in 
defiance of his unmistakable hints, of his own declarations, in sheer 
contempt of his advice and previsions ?”— lb. 

11 The dark policy of the Emperor is impenetrable, but I still am 
of opinion that there is not the slightest idea of withdrawing the 
army of occupation, and that the Italians are many of them in- 


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245 


dulging in vain illusions. v * : Home and Civita Vecchia are strategic 
points too strong to be readily abandoned by the Emperor; they 
make him the master of the destinies of Italy, which he divides, 
de facto , into North and South, and secure the best position for 
checking an invasion on the part of Austria. Rest assured, there¬ 
fore, that the Homan question is still deferred, and that nothing will 
solve it but some unforeseen and terrible crisis. In Naples we have 
a calm too great to be secure, and the patrols which walk through 
our streets at night, and the continuance of the state of siege, indicate 
some degree of apprehension on the part of the authorities. Many 
arrests have been made this week, principally of Camoristi; but, in 
the case of several, of men who were enrolling volunteers for 
brigandage, or who were leaving the city with substantial supplies 
which they had collected for the same respectable gentry. Of the 
provinces it is impossible to speak in the same comparatively cheer¬ 
ing terms, for, taking only the official returns, it is evident, that the 
same disorder and sacrifice of property and life exist now as last 
year at the same season.”— Liberal Paper. 

“No one acquainted with the state of Italy can fancy that 
the articles in the France are anything else than so many ‘feelers’ 
put forth by the Emperor Napoleon to enlist public opinion in 
France for the support of that dark, long-cherished policy, which 
aims at the dismemberment of Italian union by the perpetuation 
of the Homan question. The fall of Garibaldi, it now becomes 
evident, has relieved Napoleon from all apprehensions as to the 
strength of the revolutionary party. He is free, now, to take 
off the mask, and speak out. He indeed prefers to convey his 
moaning through the organ of one of his literary hacks; but 
M. Lagueronniere’s words are only too much in keeping with the 
Imperial policy at every stage since the Peace of Villafranca. 
Garibaldi’s fall was too sudden and complete to authorise the pro¬ 
jected French invasion of the Neapolitan territory; but Home is 
still in French hands—more thoroughly, more helplessly, more 
inexorably than ever, in French hands—and the Italians have too 
often declared, that, without Home, there is for them no national 
unity.”— Times. 

“The theory of a Papacy governing Home and its suburbs with 

* “ There are times when, to anxious, doubting mortals, no boon from heaven is so 
welcome as the final resolve which is to govern their actions .”—King lake , II. 158. 


246 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


mild and tolerant rule under the guidance of France,—of a little 
spiritual principality which shall bo in Italy, but not exactly of it,— 
of a series of pontiffs, elected under the auspices of the Bonaparte 
emperors of the West,—is absurd enough to us clear-sighted and 
calm-minded spectators, but seems a scheme of profound policy to 
the ruler, who has been brooding for the last two years over his own 
dangerous liberality, and the easiness with which he had allowed 
a first-rate Power to be established at his very gates .”—Liberal 
Paper. 

“The circular of the French Minister examines the different 
phases of the Italian question, and states, that the Imperial Govern¬ 
ment has constantly expressed the firm resolution of preserving 
Pome against all aggression, and protecting the independence and 
the sovereignty of the Pope.”— lb. 

“M. Drouyn de Lhuys testifies to the loyalty of the Italian 
Government in repressing the late rash enterprise, but states that 
the French Cabinet does not admit that, as a recompense for the 
energy and moderation of the Cabinet of Turin, France should bo 
obliged to evacuate Pome. ‘ At no period, ’ concludes the Minister, 

‘ has the French Cabinet given to Piedmont and Italy the hope, that 
it would sacrifice to them Pome and the Papacy.’ ”— lb. 

“There is not much news of a political character to give you. 
The people have not yet recovered from the shock of the oracular 
Moniteur , which is not interpreted by them logically, as it is called, 
but according to their experimental knowledge of the temporising 
duplicity of French policy. Eyes and hearts are opening gradually 
to a conviction of treason; and a sense of vindictiveness is being 
awakened, which, if reprehensible, is not to be wondered at.”— lb. 

He that but fears the thing he would not know, 

By instinct knowledge hath from other eyes 
That what he fear’d is chanc’d. 

Shakespeare. 

“Frankly, in the present conjuncture, if the idea is not concealed, 
it remains, to our eyes at least, singularly veiled. On closely 
examining the words and phrases, it is felt, that the idea is stealing 

O 

away, and to obtain from them any clearly defined sense, more per¬ 
spicacity, assuredly, than we can display, is necessary .”—French 
Paper. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


247 


“England gave tlie Italians the very best evidence of lier good¬ 
will by tlie interest she took in the Homan question. She held, that 
the Homans ought to be the best judges of what is best for them, 
and that they should be allowed to pronounce on their own destinies, 
free from all foreign pressure or constraint; that French inter¬ 
vention, even if justifiable at the outset, should not have extended 
beyond four or five years; that it has now lasted fourteen years, and 
that the presence of the French troops, far from reconciling tlie 
Homans to their Sovereign, has only widened the breach that always 
yawned between them. The French occupation, England thinks, 
ought now, especially since 1859, when all the rest of Italy was 
made free, to come to an end.”— Times. 

“It is said, that M. Lavalette, late Minister to Home, who has 
been on a visit to the Emperor at Compiegne, believes he has made 
a serious impression on His Majesty’s mind about Italian affairs; 
indeed, that he has nearly converted him to his views. Very 
possibly he believes so; but the friends of M. Drouyn de Lhuys 
may, and probably do, say the same with equal truth. This pleasing 
effect is produced less by what His Majesty says, than by what he 
does not say. He listens to all with untiring, placid patience, most 
flattering to the speaker, who goes away charmed with his own 
eloquence and the seeming acquiescence of his august hearer. The 
delusion, however, does not last long.”— lb. 

“ Any one reading the long indictment preferred against the Pope 
and his Ministers by M. Lagueronniere, will begin to ask them¬ 
selves —Can this Government, so full of ignorance, obstinacy, and 
stolid indifference, so utterly unable to understand its own position, 
to measure the forces arrayed against it with its own powers of 
resistance, the name of which has become synonymous with blunder¬ 
ing, incapacity, and reckless perversity,—can this Government be 
on the one side of the line, which separates spiritual things from 
temporal, absolutely infallible, and on the other, not only fallible, 
but the most signal failure on record ?”—Liberal Paper. 

“The tidings of the Ministerial change in the Imperial Govern¬ 
ment have certainly struck the rulers of the Italian kingdom as a 
calamity for themselves, no less than for their country. The semi¬ 
official Monarchia Nazionale ‘will not try to extenuate the sinister 
effect of that sad news, or diminish its importance,’ but it appeals to 
the * firmness and wisdom ’ of the Italians, reminding them, that it 


243 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


is precisely ‘ by adversity that the mettle and strength of a nation 
are tested.’ On the other hand, some of the moderate, I might say 
doctrinaire, organs, whether of the Ministerial or of the Opposition 
party, such as the Gazzetta del Popolo and the Op intone , persevere in 
taking the most favourable view of this ugly business, and contend 
that, as the Emperor Napoleon ‘ is never so sure to sail westwards, 
as when he seems most resolutely to steer eastwards, so he never 
was, in all probability, nearer giving up the Pope than now, when, 
by the recall of Drouyn cle Lhuys and other partisans of the 
temporal power to his council, he may be deemed to be bent on per¬ 
petuating the occupation of Pome.’ ” —Times. 

The Pope, “good easy man,” is compelled to flatter and fawn 
upon the man, who might, without any doubt or difficulty, have pre¬ 
sented to him his lost dominions, and of whom he must be quite 
aware, that he is the tool, the dupe, and the victim. I think, that 
Victor Emmanuel has no right to either portion, but he certainly 
has an equal claim to both. 

A questo eccesso e giunta 
La mia sorte tiranna, 

Deggio cliiedere aita a chi.m’inganna. 

Metastasio. 

“ The Pope, in receiving the officers of the French army of occupa¬ 
tion, eulogised the French army, which he said was valorous in war 
and disciplined in peace, and thanked it for the protection it afforded 
against the enemies of the Iloly See. He alluded to the Emperor, and 
the virtues of the Empress, and expressed great solicitude for the 
Imperial Prince, his godson. In conclusion, the Pope invoked the 
blessing of heaven on the officers and soldiers and their families, 
and the whole of France.” 

“ Why does Louis Napoleon continue to hold Pome ? It cannot be 
from any good motive; the occupation of Pome is not required by 
any real interest or real honour of France any more than of Italy. 
Put, on the other hand, we need not suppose that he does it from a 
purely fiendish delight in the wretchedness which he thus inflicts on 
Pome and Italy. The real motive probably is that, as long as ho 
holds Pome, he is a much more important person than he would be 
if he gave it up. A prince, who really wished the welfare of his 
people and his own true honour, would leave off meddling with other 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


249 


folks’ business, and would stick to making things better in his own 
kingdom. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte might, of his own act, with¬ 
out waiting for a case which has made Europe ring with iniquity, 
have given his mind to reform the horrors of his dens of torment, 
and to repress the bloodthirsty zeal of his law officers. So to do 
would have been to do something to wipe out the original guilt of 
his usurpation. But such a course of real beneficence is compara¬ 
tively obscure. A man makes much more noise in the world by meddling 
in Italy , by meddling in Mexico , by keeping the world in general in hot 
water. As long as French troops hold Borne, the ruler of France is 
a great power in the world; everybody is thinking about him, and 
talking about him, and wondering what he will do. The tyrant 
boasts himself that he can do mischief, probably not so much from 
an abstract love of mischief, as because by doing mischief he can 
best make his power felt in all parts of the world.” 

What became of the Man of December’s veneration for the Pope, 
whilst his most important provinces were invaded by Piedmontese 
troops, who, if he had only lifted up his little finger, would have re¬ 
treated, or rather never would have advanced? Where were his 
succour or his sympathy, when “Ancona was severely handled. 
Several shells fell into the churches. The congregation, who were 
assisting at the holy sacrifice, dispersed. The priests, who were 
officiating, gave proofs of courage by remaining at the altar.”— 
Lamoriciere. 

It is, I repeat the non-volumus of the Second of December, which, 
on the one hand, keeps the ex-Duke of Savoy out of Borne, and, on 
the other, prevents the Pope from recovering his lost provinces, 
through the medium either of the French troops (whom Piedmont 
could not resist), or of the aid which could be furnished by Spain or 
Austria, if they did not dread collision with France. I believe, 
that this invidious and anomalous position has excited against him 
an unavowed, but not less cordial hatred, both at Turin and at Borne. 
The one is anxious to get possession of what the Pope retains; the 
other is intent upon regaining what has been taken away; and each 
is quite aware, that, to the Second of December alone, the non-possumus 
is in both cases to be attributed. 

I believe, that the French ruler regards the Courts of Borne 
and Turin with equal feelings of indifference and contempt, and 
considers them to be ciphers and tools, which he can turn to his own 


250 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


account with impunity. He speaks of “ two parties diametrically 
opposed, absolute in their hatreds as in their convictions, deaf to 
the counsels inspired by the sole desire of their benefit. Considering 
the prejudices and hatreds, equally violent on either side, a favour¬ 
able result seems to be despaired of .”—Man of December. 

11 Each party substitutes its own exclusive sentiments in the place of 
the real principles of equity and justice. Thus, one party, forgetting 
the recognized rights of a power which has lasted for ten centimes, 
proclaims, without any consideration for so ancient an acknowledged 
institution, the fall of the Papacy.”— lb. 

“This double object might be attained by a combination which, 
maintaining the Pope master in his own domain, would remove the 
barriers, which now separate his States from the rest of Italy.”*— lb. 

The eldest son of the Church roundly tells the Papal party, that, 
“ without regard for the legitimate claims of the right of peoples, it 
condemns without a scruple a portion of Italy to eternal stagnation 
and oppression. It has against itself all the liberals of Europe. In 
politics it is looked upon as the representative of the prejudices of 
the ancien regime, and in the eyes of Italy, as the enemy of her 
independence, the most devoted partisan of reaction.”— lb. 

In all his machinations and manoeuvres with respect to Pome, 
was ever any double-minded man so unstable in all his ways ? It 
was most justly observed by Cardinal Antonelli, that “ the powers had 
already guaranteed the whole of the Pope’s dominions, and yet that 
two-thirds of them had been taken away from him. If a guarantee 
did not protect him from open spoliation, of what use could it pos¬ 
sibly be ? ”—Saturday Revieiv. 

A single word spoken in earnest by the Man of December would 
have prevented Victor Emmanuel from invading these territories, or 
compelled him to evacuate them at a moment’s notice; and yet he 
acquiesced in this act of aggression, which he hypocritically 
affected to condemn, whilst he prevented the other provinces from 
following the example of those which had been separated from the 
Papal authority. ITe resembles an astute and artful trickster, who 
undertook to defend a weak neighbour’s house, but allowed a burglar 

* He says nothing as to the mode by which such a “ combination ” could be 
accomplished. It suits his humour and interests far better to fish in troubled 
waters, and keep everything dark and dubious. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSTIIP TIIE BONAPARTES? 


251 


to obtain and keep possession of the ground floor and the attics, 
whilst ho and his servants remained joint occupants, with the lawful 
owner, of the other stories; and in regard to the remainder, the 
audacious intruder was often reprimanded, but never interfered 
with. 

“When a violent invasion deprived the Holy See of some of 
its provinces, the French Cabinet did not hesitate severely to blame 
that act , and broke off its diplomatic relations loitli the Turin Cabinet. 
The Imperial Cabinet has, therefore, constantly expressed its firm 
resolution to preserve Home against all aggression, and to protect 
there the independence and the sovereignty of the Pope. Recently 
a daring enterprise seemed to menace the States of the Holy See. 
France would not have allowed a rebel to violate the Pontifical 
territory; she would have known how to extend her protecting 
hand to put aside that danger. The Italian Government itself 
had the wisdom to stop that revolutionary moment. France 
applauded that act of energy; but it would be an error to suppose 
that, to recompense the moderation and the energy of the Turin 
Cabinet, the French Government must (doit) deviate from its policy 
and evacuate Pome. It is evident that General Duranclo’s circular 
was written under the influence of this error; the French Cabinet 
cannot admit it as a starting point of a negotiation. At no period 
has it ever held out the hope , either to Piedmont or Italy , that it would 
sacrifice to them Rome and the Papacy.”—Man of Pecember. 

11 Italy has remained one of the principal objects of our solicitude, 
and the interest which animates us towards her has not diminished. 
It was important for the Italian Government to form regular relations 
with the great Courts which constitute the European concert. Un¬ 
fortunately, the junction of Southern Italy to the northern provinces 
was accomplished out of the ordinary rules of international law, 
and several Powers, among whom were Russia and Prussia, had not 
thought it possible for them to recognise the new kingdom without 
departing from the principles of their policy. We laid before those 
two Courts the considerations by which we had been ourselves 
guided. The recognition of Italy, by bringing to the Cabinet of 
Turin a new moral force at home as well as abroad, was calculated, 
in our opinion, to give it the means of resisting thoughtless excite¬ 
ments, and of releasing itself more and more from the influence of 
extreme parties.”— lb. 


252 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ Never, I proclaim aloud, did the Government of the Emperor pro¬ 
nounce a word of a nature which would allow the Cabinet of Turin 
to hope that the capital of Catholicity would at the same time be¬ 
come, with the consent of Erance, the capital of the great kingdom 
which has been formed on the other side of the Alps. All our acts, 
all our declarations, accord, on the contrary, in stating our firm and 
constant wish to maintain the Pope in possession of that portion of 
his States which the presence of our flag has preserved to him.”— 
Man of December. 

The force of baseness can no farther go. 0 what an unparalleled 
and unfathomable abyss of effrontery and equivocation! If he be¬ 
lieves, that the Pope is really beloved and respected by his subjects, 
why does he not withdraw his garrisons, and proclaim his fixed 
resolve never to allow a single foreign soldier to trespass upon this 
hallowed and happy territory ? Even French newspapers venture 
to arraign the inconsistency and impolicy of the Imperial duplicity 
and deceit. 

What are the repeated affirmations of the ministers and diplo¬ 
matists of the Holy See, of the writers, the usual organs of the ideas 
of the Vatican, especially the Monde ? All agree in declaring that 
the Pope is always the beloved sovereign of his subjects, and that, if 
there exist at Pome hostile feelings against the Pontifical power, 
thoy must be attributed to foreign intrigues and inspirations. If it 
is thus, and it must be agreed that these reiterated proofs are not 
without authority, the solution would be less difficult, and not so far 
distant as may be supposed. The only point, then, to be considered 
would be to protect the Eoman Government against any external 
attack. 

“Supported within by the wish of the populations, protected 
against all external aggression by the formal declaration of France, 
whose word is as good as her sword, the occupation would cease to 
be necessary. 5 ’— Constitutionnel. 

“ To remain in Pome, is to prevent Italy from constituting herself, 
and from living in her unity, in her independence, in the political 
form she has desired to give herself. It is to fail in our most 
solemnly expressed principles; it is to practise the most flagrant 
intervention, after having professed non-intervention; it is to deny 
tho rights of nations freely to establish the internal conditions of 
their Government; after having recognised an united Italy under 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


253 


Victor Emmanuel, we are refusing it the means of existence. To 
remain in Rome, is not only to prevent the realisation of Italian 
unity, it is to render precarious, and perhaps impossible, the organi¬ 
sation and the progress of any regular Government, it is to abandon 
the Peninsula to revolutionary excitement and perturbations.”— 
French Fajper. 

“Is France to be faithful to the principles of the Revolution, and 
to cease all intervention between the Pope and the Romans; or is 
she, in defiance of the rights of the Italian people, indefinitely to 
prop a crumbling theocracy, incapable of retrieving itself, and of 
existing by its own strength ? ”— lb. 

“ Has the Chinch ever voluntarily abandoned any of her temporal 
advantages, any of the political privileges she has lost ? No; she 
has lost those privileges, but never did she willingly give them up. 
It has always been found necessary, in order that she should resign 
herself to do without them, that lay society should consider itself 
to have the right, and have had the courage and strength, to take 
them from her. It is not to be expected that things can pass other¬ 
wise with respect to the temporal power of the Papacy. And, as 
the Papacy retains that power solely through the military protection 
of France, it is for France to deal the decisive blow.” *• — Jb. 


VIII.— Total Prostration of Italy at the feet of the Man 
of December, and jealousy of France as to its possible 

Emancipation. 

“Who is master of Italy—Victor Emmanuel or Louis Napoleon? 
However reluctantly, the confession must be made—unless we are 
resolved to close our eyes against evidence—Louis Napoleon rules 
in Italy. It is he that dooms the Romans to the perpetuation of 
their sufferings, and it is the presence of his troops at Rome, that 
encourages the reactionary bands in the Southern part of the penin- 

* The chief object in printing these extracts, is to expose the craft and cunning? 
with which the Man of December argues on both sides, so as to protract the dark¬ 
ness and dubiety, in which he wishes the question to continue involved. 




254 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


siila, by inspiring them with the confidence of finding protection 
under the French arms. He it is, too, that dictates to M. Ratazzi , 
only in name the head of the Italian Cabinet , the conduct that he must 
pursue with reference to great questions of internal policy.”— Times. 

“As to the Turin Government, ‘it resembles,’ a friend lately wrote 
to me from Turin, ‘ that of Cavour, very much as a monkey re¬ 
sembles a man.’ ”— lb. 

“The Emperor of the French has planted one claw of the Gallic 
Eagle firmly in the side of quivering Italy. He has possession of 
Home, and an admirable military position, which enables him almost at 
icill to cut the Italian peninsula in two. He has got this advantage, 
and, as far as we can see, right or wrong, praised or blamed, he 
is quite determined to keep it.”— lb. 

1 ‘ The difficulties of Italy are enormous, and are keenly felt at this 
moment by all Italians capable of appreciating them. There is an 
almost entire unanimity of opinion that the army must be kept up 
at all hazards, and it is obvious that the only way of keeping it up 
is to put on new taxes.”— Saturday Review. 

“ The rise of Italy into a great Power is distasteful to French poli¬ 
ticians ; but if it is successfully completed, every French writer of 
the next century will complacently assume for his country the merit 
of having created a Latin nation.”— Saturday Review. 

‘ ‘ There is something positively frantic in the warnings, exhorta¬ 
tions, and menaces by which French writers of all parties are endea¬ 
vouring to shake that resolution, to which Italians came more than 
two years ago, to constitute themselves into a compact, united com¬ 
munity. A large State, say these very zealous champions of the 
Italian cause, is the tomb of freedom; in a large State there are 
none but subjects; unity calls for centralisation ; centralisation kills 
liberty. In the name of liberty, then, the Italians are invited to 
destroy their rising unity—that unity which must needs be based on 
despotism; they are invited to go asunder, that they may be free.” 
— Times. 

“ The author of the Deux Decembre is wedded to the most bigoted 
ideas of Imperialism. Italy must move within the orbit of his Imperial 
system , and Home is the pole round which the peninsula must revolve. 
What strength still lies in the old edifice of Catholicism, what in¬ 
fluence is still wielded by the hand of the Roman Pontiff, must be¬ 
come a main element of Imperial power.”— Liberal Paper. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


255 


“The Emperor has crushed liberty in France, and Imperialism is 
necessarily at war with all that is independent in the nation it has 
mastered. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

u There is no contesting’ the power of the Emperor to keep his 
troops at Home, if he pleases.”— lb. 

“If the French are resolved to stay at Rome, stay they must. The 
Italians cannot drive them out.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The French not only abide at Borne, not only fortify and make 
themselves quite at home in it, not only by their Ministerial shifts 
seem bent on casting roots in its soil, but they even give clear hints 
of using Rome as an instrument of dissolution of the Italian Kingdom — 
a wedge to force the South asunder from the North—Borne, a 
stepping-stone for the acquisition (it hardly need be called con¬ 
quest) of Naples.”— lb. 

“A possible war, either with Austria or France, has been this week 
at once the topic of conversation in society, and the theme of the press. 
Of course it is but a shadowy, impalpable sort of rumour, but I men¬ 
tion it as indicating a feeling, which each day gets stronger , that France 
is in reality very little more the friend of Italy than is Austria her selfP 
—lb. 

Italy must have discovered long ago the selfishness and hypocrisy 
of the Man of December’s unsolicited interference in her concerns— 

Certes, je vons croyais un peu plus genereux, 

Quand les heros le seul, ils lie font rien eux. 

Corneille. 

The object of France was to destroy the Emperor of Austria’s 
influence, not to promote Italian independence— 

Et lorsqu’a mes desirs elle a feint d’applauder, 

Elle a voulu le perdre, et uni pas m’aggrandir. 

Corneille. 

“ Italy has, from a combination of causes, become so dependent on France, 
that any public display of deference is peculiarly unpopular. The 
desire for the evacuation of Borne, is founded rather on a dislike of 
foreign interference, than on the supposed expediency of resuming 
the ancient capital.” —Saturday Review. 

“As his engagements with the Holy See allowed of the alienation 
of the Marches and Legations, sanguine Liberals may hold that his 


256 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


duties are not less compatible with the secularisation of Rome itself, 
and its remaining territory.”— Saturday Review. 

“Except among journalists, we have found in no class of the French 
population any sympathy with the Italian revolution. If an inquiry 
were made as to the feelings of all Frenchmen, they would be found 
unanimous (excepting the journalists, of course) in declaring that 
the Italians cost us a great deal, and bring in but little. Even in 
the most distant provinces, it is seen that the Italians pay us in 
wretched coin, and people do not restrain themselves from saying 
so.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ I mention this fact chiefly to show you how the French Govern¬ 
ment has blinded itself in regard to Italy, and how completely it 
believes itself to have obtained a right to control this nation , as if it were 
his Imperial Majesty's puppet-box .”— lb. 

“ The Emperor will scarcely admire the way in which he is spoken 
of in Turin. In what terms he is spoken of in Rome and at Pisa, 
your readers have seen, from two curious documents emanating from 
those two cities, which I sent you yesterday.”— lb. 

“If the feeling of the Liberals towards the Emperor has been 
that of impatience and anger, that of the Divine-right party has 
been one of inveterate hostility.”— Times. 

“France will keep her soldiers at Rome, because she thus has the 
satisfaction of feeling her own power, and of thwarting the hopes 
she has encouraged in the Italians. The Emperor will sanction this 
policy, in order to inspire Italy with a sense of her dependence on him , to 
make Europe look up to him as the supreme arbiter of events, and 
to please all those of his subjects, who view with jealousy everything 
that tends to make Italy great and happy.” *■— lb. 

“ France, having once again won glory at the expense of Austrian 
armies, may try the diversion of another campaign in the pleasant 
fields of Italy whenever the policy of Paris, or the restlessness of the 
French army, require such a pastime.”— Times. 

“ It would be good policy of the Italian Government and people, 
to abjure all present designs upon Yenetia, which, in course of time, 
will probably become theirs, but which it is in vain for them at 
present to hope for.”— lb. 

* The epithet “ Felix ’’ could not with any justice he transferred from Arabia to 
Italy. 




OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 257 

“ There can be no doubt that some Italians have weakly or corruptly 
listened to French overtures , for the cession of various portions of the 
existing kingdom .”— Times. 

“ Constitutional forms in Italy, have as powerful an enemy in the 
person of the French autocrat, as they were said to have in Prussia.” 
—Liberal Taper. 

‘ 1 As long as the Emperor is convinced, that no act of his, however 
overbearing, will be sufficient to rouse Italian indignation, he will 
continue to treat his allies in the same cavalier, contemptuous 
manner.”— lb. 

“The humiliation, which this note of the Imperial Minister in¬ 
flicts on the Government of Victor Emmanuel, is complete, and such 
as to send it down to posterity morally ‘crushed.’ But the disgrace 
for the Italian people is certainly not less than this humiliation, 
and if the smart of this brutal blow is not felt by them on 
their face, and if they do not prepare to wash out the stain, swearing 
to themselves to vindicate—at any cost—their rights, Italy will with 
justice be called la terra di codardi (the land of cowards), as it was 
once unjustly called, la terra dei morti (the land of the dead).”— 
XJnitd Italiana ijMaz&inian Republican). 

“It is unworthy of a people of 22,000,000 souls, they urge, to 
be watching the sunshine or shade on the countenance of a foreign Sove¬ 
reign , as if they were dependent on him for the very breath of their 
nostrils. The Emperor Napoleon may have done good or evil to 
Italy; it may be in his power to do more; the Eoman question may 
rest on him alone for a favourable solution, but there is no reason 
why the Italians should be helpless and passive; why all their 
efforts should be limited to a painful, ignoble speculation on any 
whim that may happen to pass through an uncertain and tenebrous 
mind; all their business an unceasing survey of the vagaries of a 
capricious weathercock.”— Times. 

“ He called upon them to be free to the Adriatic; he undertook to 
fffiht their battles. He then came to a standstill at Villafranca, left 
their affairs in a hopeless muddle, but laid out at least one sound, 
clear principle; he screened them from foreign intervention. Ho 
did not say at the time that France reserved the power to meddle in 
Italian matters.”— Liberal Taper. 

“There does not appear any reason for our envying the French 
those victories, which have done but little for Italy, in comparison 

R 





258 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSniF THE BONAPARTES ? 


with what they cost, and with what was promised, although they 
have certainly been profitable to France, which gained by them 
Nice and Savoy, and seems much disposed to lceep Rome”—Liberal Paper . 

“ That the Emperor of the French was for one moment serious in 
his late proposal, will bo believed by no man in his senses. The 
experiment could be made easily enough. Napoleon has only to 
express his firm ivill, to pronounce his final fiat. Neither of the con¬ 
tending parties has the means to withstand it.”— Times. 

“Much has occurred which must have tended to awaken the 
conviction, that the Government of Victor Emmanuel is bent 
upon internal reaction, as well as upon a course of reckless sub¬ 
serviency to the designs Louis Napoleon is maturing abroad. Italian 
citizens have been arrested wholesale, and shot down at Brescia, 
whilst bills were brought in in the Parliament at Turin, for the 
curtailment of the right of free meeting, and the restriction of the 
right of free speech.”— Lb. 

“Petruccelli came away in a state of perfect ignorance as to the 
offence, which may have called down upon him the displeasure of the 
Imperial authorities. We happen to know, however, that as a 
representative of the Italian nation, in the full exercise of his 
unlimited freedom of speech, Petruccelli repeatedly indulged in very 
sharp and writhing language, sparing neither the French Govern¬ 
ment nor its autocratic chief, so that we may be allowed to suppose, 
that the chastisement inflicted on one of its members was intended 
as a warning to the whole Italian Assembly. It is well to add, that 
Petruccelli, both as an Italian journalist, and a correspondent of the 
French and English press, and lately, while in London, as a con¬ 
tributor to one of your morning contemporaries, has been more out¬ 
spoken than the ruler of the French Empire ivould allow any European 
writer to be , if he could help it; so that the blow, which hit the Italian 
Deputy, may be equally aimed at his brother quill-drivers beyond 
the Bhine, the Alps, and the Channel. It is true, that already, in 
1860, Petruccelli’s sarcasms had been so obnoxious to the Court of 
the Tuileries, as to win him then not only the honour of an ostracism, 
but also an ominous intimation never again to set foot on French 
soil.”— lb. 

“What can bo imagined more mean, more undignified, more 
ungenerous, than all this shilly-shallying about M. Batazzi’s journey 
to Paris ? It was already sufficiently wounding to our national pride, 


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259 


to know, that this statesman, when he compassed the downfall of the 
Bicasoli Cabinet, durst not undertake the management of the Italian 
Government , without a 'previous understanding with the French Emperor” 
— Times. 

“ Italy cannot have Borne; she must wait for it. Better * whistle ’ 
than pray for it; better go without it to all eternity, than degrade 
herself by ignoble solicitations about it—vain entreaties offered to an 
inconsistent , equivocating , overbearing foreign potentate. Italy must 
wait. She must follow not an expectant, inactive, subservient 
policy, but she must learn to act for and rely on herself; to find out 
such a way to Borne, as no jealous power may be able to obstruct.” 
—Liberal Paper. 

“It is x^etty obvious, by this time, that Louis Napoleon is not 
passionately attached to the idea of a united Italy. It is notorious, 
on the contrary, that he still clings to the notion of a northern and a 
southern kingdom, over one of which a prince of his own house shall 
reign. Wo fear it cannot be contradicted that Bicasoli fell by reason 
of French intrigue: it is possible, that the resignation of Batazzi 
may be another stej) in the development of the subtle design, which 
those intrigues were hatched to x^romote. The sinister aims of France 
will certainly thrive best on the impatience, folly, or feebleness 
which may predominate at Turin.”— lb. 

“ He must see that this constant irritation, by sx>eeches and pam- 
phlets, and little acts, pro and con , is not a generous mode of dealing 
with a great matter. It is not very impossible, than even the people 
of France may come to feel something like indignation at such a 
spectacle too long drawn out.”— Times. 

“ Feeling that the disquiet of the world at his procrastination has 
reached a point which makes even statesmen irritable, Nax)oleon 
comes forward to address his subjects and their neighbours in the 
old tone of affected unreserve. But there is no little art in the 
Imperial manner of doing this. The august writer does not by the 
X>ublication of his letter make known his x>resent ox>inions.”— Times. 

“ The Chief of the State has before him two ways open, both as 
to external and to internal affairs. His x>olicy abroad is only un¬ 
decided because it is irresolute at home; his entourage is divided into 
two camps—he himself goes from one to the other. He listens, but 
does not declare himself. He cannot decide; so business languishes, 
the crisis continues and developes itself.”— Liberal Paper. 

r 2 


2G0 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“It was avowed, tliat tlie policy of Trance in Italy was a 
selfish, and crooked one, and that the whole of his proceedings 
showed, in a manner not to he mistaken, that the Emperor had no 
intention to let go his hold on Italy, hut was promoting confusion 
there in furtherance of his anti-Italian designs .”—Liberal Paper. 

‘ ‘ In presence of the events now taking place in Italy, it is impos¬ 
sible to avoid asking, how much longer the peace of the Peninsula is 
to he imperilled hy the suspense of the Eoman question ? The solu¬ 
tion of that question, is practically in the hands of Prance. Relieved 
from the intervention of Prench arms, the question would settle 
itself in a few hours, and the greatest hindrance to the completion 
of Italian unity would he taken out of the way for ever. The world 
looks on and asks, why the peace of Europe and the progress of a 
rapidly-growing nation, are to he maintained in a constant fear of 
danger ? That Rome is the natural capital of Italy, and that the 
rule of the King of Italy can never he thoroughly established while 
Rome is exempted from his sway, is too apparent to need proof.”— 
Morning Post. 

“That the terms insisted* on hy Prance are onerous and ungene¬ 
rous, no man will deny, and, as I said, on an equality of circumstances, 
it would he better to eschew all treaties, than to put up with so losing 
a bargain. It is idle, however, to talk about equal circumstances. 
France stands before Italy in the light of a benefactress, and con¬ 
ceives herself entitled to exact such return as seems good to herself, 
not only for favours conferred, hut for favours to he conferred. 
Commercial interests must give way before political considerations, 
and although it is idle to hope to propitiate an overhearing neigh¬ 
bour, by yielding to his unjust pretensions, still it may he worth 
while to humour France in this matter, in obedience to that feeling 
which led superstitious people to offer up sacrifices to an evil deity, 
that they might he spared the harm it was in its power to inflict.”— 
Times. 

“So far as his past history enables us to guess, we believe 
that the Emperor has scarcely any clearer knowledge of what 
Prance will do with Rome than the ordinary Parisian journalist 
has. He is waiting to see what will turn up, what will suit him 
best, and what the logic of facts will compel or permit him to do. 


* In a commercial treaty. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


261 


He is swayed by conflicting motives, and enjoys a state of suspense 
which ensures him temporary safety and temporary importance.” 
—Saturday Review. 

u What Italy would have said to the Emperor’s scheme we need 
not ask. Cardinal Antonelli would not hear of it, and we really 
cannot help thinking that Cardinal Antonelli was right .”—Liberal 
Paper. 

11 His last words before starting for Biarritz had been, not 
only that he could not or would not name a day, however distant, 
for the withdrawal of the French garrison from Home, but that he 
was more than ever convinced of the impracticability of the scheme 
of Italian unity, and of the expediency of constituting the peninsula 
into a confederacy of three States.”— lb. 

“The mere report of such words or thoughts (however un¬ 
founded), and the fact that the French, far from giving any sign of 
decamping, seem to strike their roots deeper than ever at Home, are 
ominous.”— lb. 

“ The confidence of each party was backed by an equal weight of 
authority, and every one who thought there was any value in such 
an oracle might read it according to his own desires.”— lb. 

“Why, it was asked, did he give out an oracle in which every 
section of politicians might plausibly hope they read a future suc¬ 
cess, and every section of opinion might plausibly claim to find 
Imperial sympathy? We did not then, nor do we now, profess to 
read the riddles of Napoleon III.”— lb. 

“ The article in the Moniteur to some degree revived the hopes of 
the Liberals, as it did those of the priest party, so that it may be 
regarded as one of the customary Sibylline oracles, which every one 
may interpret according to his own inclinations.”— lb. 

“Let us even go further, and, shutting our eyes to great events, 
let us believe, that his thoughts were unselfish, and his action dic¬ 
tated only by zeal for liberty, civilization, and religion.”— lb. 

“We derive some consolation from a conviction ‘that the 
Emperor is never so sure to sail westwards as when he seems most 
resolutely to steer eastwards.’ This way of arriving at the right 
point is not very flattering to His Majesty.”— lb. 

“The trick is getting too stale; and the cunning device of 
keeping a double set of official newspapers to advocate a double set 
of official policies is beginning to lose effect.”— lb. 


262 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


“The Emperor lias made no sign, although he saw Italy trem¬ 
bling on the verge of civil war. He heard the united cry of a noble 
people, he read the resolve of her greatest patriot in his daring 
scheme to free Borne or die, and yet he allowed more blood to be 
shed and more danger to be encountered by a friendly sovereign in 
appeasing the impatience of his people, months after his ultimatum 
had been scornfully rejected. Englishmen cannot look on unmoved 
at a policy yielding such results, and the Emperor may read in the 
outspoken addresses of our countrymen at the numerous meetings 
which are being held to sympathise with Garibaldi, the almost 
universal feeling of reprobation with which his continued refusal 
Ho lower the barriers ’ is viewed .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ Neither Italy nor England can turn the French out, but they 
can set the occupation in its true light. Henceforth, if it is pro¬ 
longed, it must be prolonged on the ground that France wishes to 
keep Italy weak, divided, and in confusion, and that the theories of 
foreign Catholics as to the expediency of keeping the Pope at Borne 
are to prevail over the cry of the wretched Bomans for law, and 
liberty, and life .”—Saturday Review. 

“ His policy is now avowed. He desires to reconcile the claims of 
both parties; to root out patriotism and ambition from the breasts 
of the Italians, and obstinacy from the breast of the Pope. Whether 
he will succeed we leave the world to judge .”—Liberal Paper. 

“It suits him to envelop himself in eternal mystery; to unsay 
to-day what he said yesterday ; to let out half his mind in one of his 
officious organs—to have it promptly contradicted in another. It is 
this uncertainty and this inconsistency, these false promises and 
treacherous concessions, this dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying, that 
kept up all the ferment and discontent in Italy.”— Lb. 

“ The French are those who must move in the matter ; they have 
to reconcile the Pope with his subjects—an enterprise about as 
hopeful as the squaring of the circle, perpetual motion, and the 
division of the indivisible point.”— lb. 

“Were the case less serious, we could hardly refrain from smiling 
at the way in which for the last two years he has bamboozled Italy 
and Europe upon this Boman question. Never was the double 
function of the semi-official press of Paris more systematically 
worked upon, or more transparently exposed. On the authority of 
one of these journals, Victor Emmanuel seemed to be almost on the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


2G3 


point of entering Home with, the full assent of the French Govern¬ 
ment, when another of the oracles the following week slammed the 
door in his face, thus rendering the realisation of his desires more 
hopeless than ever. The question was always in progress, yet never 
seemed to move on. The prospects of the Italian people kept 
revolving in a circle, now a little better, now a little worse, but 
always ending after every crisis just where they were at starting. 
How often have we seen the signs of the Tuileries described and 
interpreted by the shrewdest political writers in Europe, and a 
speedy settlement of the question confidently predicted. The system 
of misleading the public through the press has been regularly 
engrafted on the scheme of government, and is handled with the 
most perfect skill and success. No sooner does Europe get out of 
one pit than she falls into another .”—BelVs Messenger. 

“We are not so Utopian as to expect, in diplomatic communica¬ 
tions, straightforward honest proposals which could be understood by 
the uninitiated, and to which an intelligible answer could be given 
in ordinary language. What would become of the art of governing 
if diplomacy were to cease to be a science of equivocation ? But 
there is in the Emperor’s letter rather more vagueness than usual 
even in documents emanating from that august pen, and treating of 
so high a policy. Who can tell us what is meant by the Pope 
i lowering the barriers,’ which separate the Pontifical territory from 
Italy, while the Pope is to remain ‘master in his own domain,’ a 
domain which, from M. Thouvenel’s gloss, we learn means his pre¬ 
sent territory ? The only barrier, in the opinion of Europe, which 
separates the Pontifical territory from the rest of Italy is the 
French army.”— lb. 

“Everybody speaks of it as a most remarkable State paper, as a 
masterly specimen of diplomatic composition, and so forth; but when 
you urge people to tell you what they infer from it for the future, 
they are at a loss for a reply, or else they interpret it according to 
the tendency of their own desires .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ He does not love direct manifestoes, or straightforward explana¬ 
tions. Like the deities of old, he prefers to speak through oracles, 
whose dark and ambiguous utterances help to conceal his thoughts.” 
—Saturday Review. 

“Katazzi has been as unsuccessful as if he had been the most 
impracticable of blunderers, and his failure is not redeemed by the 


264 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


dignity of his character. He succeeded to office by a palace in¬ 
trigue, immediately after a suspicious visit to Paris .”—Saturday 
Review. 

“As there are no means of reaching the real offender in the 
Tuileries, it is probable, that public feeling will vent itself in the 
dismissal of his nominee.”— lb. 

“If he has sometimes opposed the just demands of Italy, they 
argue, that he has always yielded at the proper moment; and, giving 
him credit in their enthusiasm for betraying the Grand Dukes and 
the King of Naples, they trust that at the proper time he will also 
leave the Pope at their mercy.”— lb. 

The Opinion Nationale speaks out with equal plainness:—“To 
wish, at the same time, the unity of Italy and the temporal power of 
the Pope is a manifest contradiction, and it is not the only one in 
our policy. What have we gone to do in Mexico ? To permit the 
Mexicans to vote, free from all pressure of parties, for the Govern¬ 
ment which shall suit them the best. What are we doing at Pome ? 
Exactly the contrary. Is it true, yes or no ? There is no doubt on 
which side all the arguments are, and the best proof of this is the 
miserable j esuitical casuistry to which the defenders of the French 
occupation of Pome are reduced.” 

“ Pome is worth nothing in itself in the hands of France; its value 
in her eyes arises from the mere fact, that it may be used as an 
instrument against Italian unity; as a wedge between Turin and 
Naples it can work immense mischief; but only if the Italians show 
slackness and pusillanimity in self-defence .”—Liberal Paper. 

“Everywhere the people think, with good reason, that they are 
under the spell of a strange delusion, of an inexplicable mystification. 
This conviction alone is sufficient to perplex the multitude, to para¬ 
lyse the armed force, and to bring about that very catastrophe which 
the Government apparently is striving to avert.”— lb. 

“ The Imperial instructions of the 20th of May, and M. Thouvenel’s 
despatch of ten days’ later date, have been published together, and 
must be read together; and, being thus read, they serve only to 
render darkness more dark, and incertitude more uncertain.”— Times. 

“It is difficult to understand the publication of those documents, 
unless intended as a forerunner of better things for Italy. It is not 
to be supposed that they were thrown as a tub to a whale, to gratify 
and content the Italians for a moment, or until such time as they 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


265 


should discover the hollowness of the lure. That would indeed he a 
policy unworthy not only of the Emperor, but of any one pretending 
to the name of statesman .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ If the French Government desires to see the goodwill the Italians 
were at one time so ready and joyful in according it exchanged for 
hatred, and transferred entirely to England, it cannot do better than 
follow its present course of maintaining the Pope at Pome, and con¬ 
niving at—not to say favouring—the atrocious system of brigandage 
which the Priest-Government and the ex-King of Naples keep up in 
the last-named country.”— lb. 

11 The relations between the Imperial personages are as obscure as 
ever. Napoleon the Prince disagrees from Napoleon the Emperor, 
but no one can say with certainty that he will not convert him, that 
he has not already converted him. A strange feature of the Em¬ 
peror’s conduct in all the Italian questions is his seeming desire to 
be thought capable of changing his mind. He has allowed himself 
to be opposed with success so often, that one may almost believe the 
temporal power will at last perish by some gentle violence used by 
the Italian people on its great defender.”— lb. 

11 France is, almost to a man, averse to Italian unity.”— Press. 

“ In her cold, plausible, half doctrinaire, half sarcastic spirit, 
France chooses to sneer at those she opposes in their most natural 
and legitimate aspirations.”— Times. 

“France continues to pursue the erroneous policy of foreign inter¬ 
vention, which Magenta and Solferino were intended to destroy. 
Calamitous results to Italy, which arise from the continued occupa¬ 
tion of Pome by France, are notorious to all the world. It has 
injurious effects upon her independence, and altogether destroys the 
unity of the kingdom. . . . This occupation protects a conspiracy of 
the worst kind against the peace and prosperity of the new kingdom, 
and is thus indirectly made the instrument of filling the southern 
half of the peninsula with violence and bloodshed. In a word, 
France is, at this moment, perpetuating in Italy the very evils she 
professedly interfered to put an end to. The French occupation of 
Pome produces effects of the same disastrous and destructive kind as 
those resulting from the old Austrian occupation. . . . Such a policy 
is an insult to Italy, and an outrage on the understanding of Europe.” 
Daily Neios. 

“ Austria has as good a title to Venice, as any other sovereign 


266 


OTJGnT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTE S ? 


in tlie world lias to his own dominions. France, on the contrary, has 
not a shadow of claim to the sovereignty of Rome, and in accordance 
with all her own professions, is hound to renounce her temporary 
occupation at the earliest possible opportunity .”—Daily News. 

u France loses more in reputation and influence than she gains in 
actual military power by persisting in the repression of the Roman 
people.”— Times. 

“ The time will surely come when the Emperor, ashamed of 
oppressing a gifted people, and weary of priestly obstinacy and 
ingratitude, will own the justice of his cousin’s protest, and the force 
of his minister’s arguments.”— lb. 

11 The non possumus , which so nettles and plagues French statesmen, 
arises from the fact that they, in violation of all principles of non¬ 
intervention, tread upon the neck of a people—of a portion of that 
people whom they three years ago called upon to be men and free¬ 
men.”— lb. 

“ Decidedly the habit lately indulged in by the French and Italian 
Parliaments of talking at each other, might lead to serious compli¬ 
cations, were it not that Italian resentment must needs be smothered 
by a feeling of the great debt under which the events of 1859 placed 
them, and also by the consciousness of their embarrassed and help¬ 
less situation.”— St. Jameses Chronicle. 

“ There have been times when the Emperor’s desire to settle this 
question has been greater than at others. He has tried to pull it 
straight, first from one side and then from the other. lie has leaned 
alternately to Italy and to the Pope. But he has never been 
thoroughly sincere in the matter. When he looks round to count 
his friends, he will see only a party whose traditional policy is Bour- 
bonist, Orleanist, anything but Napeolonist, and Italy, with the 
posture of gratitude changed for one of hatred and contempt.”— lb. 

“ That must indeed be but a feeble cause which can only be 
propped up by such flimsy sophistries, and to what condition have 
they reduced the once glowing prestige of the French Empire ? Is it 
not true, that the representatives of the French Empire throughout 
Italy were unable to celebrate the French Emperor’s fete day with 
the customary honours, for fear of insults ? ”—Liberal Paper. 

11 The French Government affects to believe in an imperturbable 
and perpetual sentiment of gratitude, arising from the real services 
which were rendered to the Italian cause in the. campaign of 1859 ; 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


267 


and on this fund the Emperor Napoleon has drawn with as liberal 
a confidence as if he had been granting Papal indulgences out of an 
inexhaustible treasury of supererogatory merits. His reproofs, his 
patronage, his protection of Francis II. at Gaeta, and, above all, his 
obstinate retention of Pome, appear almost to have drained the 
supply of Italian thankfulness'and trust. Signor Patazzi is driven 
from office in consequence of various real or supposed errors, but 
principally because he had originally held himself out as the 
favourite of a foreign potentate. His visit to Paris would have been 
readily condoned, if it had procured any advantage to his country; 
but as it has been followed by a long succession of disappointments 
and mortifications, it is naturally remembered as a useless compro¬ 
mise of dignity .”—Saturday Review. 

“ The Poman territory will be occupied by the Emperor in a new 
sense. It will be occupied as we occupied the territories of a native 
prince in India, whom we still permitted nominally to reign. The 
French will keep up a Pope as we kept up a King of Delhi. It is 
equally politic to perpetuate and use the prestige of the successor of 
St. Peter and of the successor of the Great Mogul. But France will 
govern and rule in Pome ; and every year that she holds her position 
there, she will find herself at once obliged and enabled to take the 
whole administration of secular matters into her hands.”— II. 

11 In the seventh paragraph of the Address it was said that 1 Italy, 
nearer to us, herself seconds the allaying of fears, after having 
caused them to arisethat 1 at Turin people no longer speak of 
Pomeand that ‘ the independence of Italy is not a compact made 
by France with the Revolution.’ By these expressions the Senate 
pledged itself to support the Emperor in his more illiberal policy, 
and affected to believe, that the desire of the Italians for Pome, and 
of the Romans for union with Italy, was a revolutionary dream that 
had vanished before the firm will of the French ruler.”— limes. 

1 ‘As long as Italy is unsettled, there can be no security for the 
peace of the world. The French army is at Pome, where it has no 
business to be, and the French Emperor cannot retain it there with¬ 
out public scandal, and does not know how to remove it. Many 
people foresee, that storms, which may in the end destroy his dynasty, 
may arise from the state of Italy, with which he is trifling too long. 
French writers already see this. One of the many French writers 
who are supposed to derive their inspiration from the Emperor has 


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OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


stated, within the last few days, that Italy ought to he dismembered 
in the interests of the peace of Europe, and the public journals have 
been asserting that, if there should come public troubles in France, 
the best diversion of them would be a foreign war.”— Kinglake. 

“ The negotiations carried on at Home are not serious, and they 
cannot come to anything, inasmuch as the Pope solemnly declares, 
that his conscience does not allow him to make any concession so long 
as the provinces are not restored to him, and of which the French 
Government has always refused to demand the restitution.”— French 
Paper. 

11 It is remarked as curious that the Emperor, in his answer to the 
Address of the Senate, in this day’s Moniteur , seems to ignore the 
existence of Prince Napoleon. His Majesty speaks of his satisfac¬ 
tion at the ‘ unanimity ’ with which the Address was voted, for¬ 
getting that Prince Napoleon voted against it, the only senator who 
did so.”— Times. 

“ The friends of the Prince affirm that not only on this, but on 
many a previous occasion, the Emperor and he thoroughly under¬ 
stand each other, and are more in accord than the world gives them 
credit for, even when the dissension seems the widest.”— lb. 

Pome versus Turin—Billault versus Thouvenel. — M. Billault .— 
u The Emperor has always desired the independence of Italy and the 
independence of the Holy See. Various means to this end have 
been proposed, but have not yet had any result. But the Emperor 
intends to pursue his object. In order to characterise the present 
state of things, I must say that the non possumus which we met with 

at Pome, we now encounter at Turin.The attitude of Italy 

tends to allay apprehensions after having brought them into being. 
The period of conflicts is receding; that of arrangements appears 
to be drawing near. Pome is no longer spoken of at Turin, and at 
Pome herself the Government is occupied with reforms. Supported 
by the presence of our army, the Pope has loudly expressed his 
gratitude to the Emperor. His Holiness is aware that the inde¬ 
pendence of Italy is not based upon a pact of France with the 
Pevolution, and that your Majesty’s assistance may be reckoned 
on when the claims of honour and past engagements have been ful¬ 
filled.” 

M. Thouvenel. —M. Thouvenel adverted to the memorandum of the 
Pontifical Government, and considered that the reforms announced 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


2G9 


therein were not of a serious character. He said, “ The great obstacle 
to any reconciliation is always Home. I do not admit the right of 
the Italians to demand Home, but it is impossible to contest the right 
of the Romans to be governed according to their wishes. It is the 
wish of the Romans that the temporal authority of the Pope should 
be transformed.Well, I seriously ask, does it contain any ap¬ 

pearance of the concessions indispensable to the reconciliation of 
the power of the Pope with his subjects? No ! The situation, as 
defined last year by a minister without portfolio, has undergone no 
change; the great obstacle is still at Rome. I find nothing in the 
Address calculated to diminish it; I find nothing responding to the 
Emperor’s thought, that it is urgent to give a definite solution to the 
Roman question. This question causes great moral disorder in the 

public mind, especially in Prance.Ofcourseldo not admit, nor 

have I ever admitted, that the Italians have a right to claim Rome 
as their capital; but there is one right which indisputably belongs 
to the Romans—that of being governed in conformity with their 
own wishes. Well, it is the unanimous wish of the Romans that the 
temporal authority of the Pope should be transformed, and I regret 
that the Committee has not thought proper to say so in the Address. 
Foreign occupation,” said thehon. senator in concluding, “cannever 
be recognized as a fact.” 

“It is instructive to observe the instinctive reliance which con¬ 
spirators against freedom not unreasonably repose in universal suf¬ 
frage. ’ ’ — Daily News. 

But it is deprecated and despised wherever it militates against 
the views and interests of its most ardent and audacious champions. 

“ I think I have baited too many of these traps, to be caught in 
one of them myself.”— Congreve. 

Whilst these pages were in the press, my attention was directed 
to a recent speech on Italian affairs, delivered by one of the supple 
and sordid pseudo-patriots, who have sold to the highest, or rather 
only, bidder, their consciences and their country. 

“A man of craft and subtlety, who directed his operations by a 
set of artful expedients, and measured the value of justice by the advan¬ 
tage it brought; who, in short, thought interest the thing of superior 




270 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


excellence , and that nature had made no difference between truth and 
falsehood, but either was recommended by its use.”— Plutarch , 

Lysander. 

“ Us vous repousseraient avec fierte, si vous leur offriez un louis, 
qu’on ne donne qu’a un valet, mais ils s’attendriraient devant des 
rouleaux de cette meme monnaie; ils feront des infamies pour l’ob- 
tenir. La pile en augmentant, diminue, efface Finsulte, la rend un 
bienfait.”— Mirdbeau , II., 365. 

The cool and callous effrontery of the speaker is much more 
unquestionable than his eloquence or his consistency. 

“ Prince Napoleon is said, on one occasion, to have convinced 
M. Baroehe; and that unfortunate official had to be ordered by the 
Emperor to unsay the next day all that Prince Napoleon had induced 
him to acknowledge .”—Saturday Review. 

“ Si je pease exprimer l’orateur sans defaut, 

La raison dit Dufaure, et la rime Billault.”* 


* M. Baroehe presents another striking example of the virulence with which 
renegades assail the party which they desert. One of the members of the Pro¬ 
visional Government, M. Gamier Pages, has addressed a letter to M. Baroehe on the 
subject. He sent it to the papers which gave M. Baroche’s speech, hut none of them 
has ventured or cared to publish it. It is as follows:—“ Sir, and former Col¬ 
league,—In the warmth of debate, you allowed words of hatred and wrath to escape 
you against the Government of 1848. I hesitated noticing them, because it is 
repugnant to me to reply to unjust attacks. But, as it is at the very moment of the 
elections, and on the occasion of the elections, that you uttered these words, I cannot 
remain silent; and I now—without, however, any feeling of bitterness—give you 
an opportunity of retracting what you, perhaps, regret having said. After the 
suicide of the monarchy , the Provisional Government—the creation of necessity and of 
public safety—received your ready and earnest adhesion. It was you who, as the head 
of the order of advocates, first came to offer us, on behalf of the Paris Par, your 
salutations and your best wishes ; and when, after seventy days of dictatorship 
during the tempest, that Government honourably handed over its powers to the 
Constituent Assembly, you were the first to vote for the decree that the ‘ Provisional 
Government had deserved well of the country.’ Subsequently you asked to be allowed 
to take part in the meeting of representatives, of which I was the chairman alter¬ 
nately with MM. Dupont (de l’Eure), Arago, and Marie. Why, then, come forward 
to stigmatise a revolution in which you participated—a past in which you were mixed 
up ? Why stultify yourself ? Why not admit the services it rendered, and which 
have effaced whatever faults may have been committed ? Your adhesion and your 
votes were justified by the acts of that Government.” 





OTJGITT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE DONAPARTES ? 


271 


“ M. Baroche said, more suo, precisely the contrary of wliat he had 
said the day before, so much so as to call for the sarcastic remark 
from his Highness Prince Napoleon on the marvellous facility with 
which that gentleman can change his opinions, and on the possibility 
of his reverting to his original condition.”— Times. 

He is certainly sans peur, since he can venture to stand up in the 
Senate, and gulp down all his former professions of liberalism as 
dexterously as the Indian jugglers swallow knives. But if he is also 
sans reproche , it can only be within the precincts of an assembly steeped 
to the very lips, like himself, in venality and adulation. 

“ II y a deux especes de changements, les changements desinte- 
resses et les changements avantageux; respectons ceux qui changent 
en sens contraire de la puissance et de la fortune; reservons nos 
severites pour ceux qui font penitence de leurs anciennes opinions au 
milieu de la richesse et des honneurs.”— Journal de Bruxelles. 

I may, however, be permitted to express my cordial assent to his 
statement, that, “ on the other side of the Channel, Italy has the 
theoretical sympathies of England,” and no more. This is avowed, 
and alleged as a title to respect, by British Cabinet Ministers, in the 
following terms:— 

‘‘I do not believe it is possible that any nation can be kept 
for long out of rights which are incontestably its own. But, at 
the same time, we do not interfere. We say to Italy, 1 You have 
our sympathy ; free institutions will always have our moral support , 
but anything more we cannot and ivill not give. We think you are 
unwise in asking it, for no nation deserves liberty which has not 
conquered liberty for itself.’ I believe the moral support we have 
given to Italy has done more than armies could have done. It has 
encouraged her, and enabled her to place herself in her present 
proud position, and she will be grateful for it hereafter.” 

“We have recently given our moral influence to the Italians, 
who are struggling for freedom. There unfortunately still weighs 
on a part of that beautiful and noble land an incubus in what 
ought to be the capital of the kingdom. I can never believe that 
error and wrong can be everlasting. I cannot but believe that truth 
and justice must in the end prevail, and therefore, much as I lament 
tlio shorn position of the Italian kingdom, I cannot but believe that 


272 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


a brighter period is in store for it, and that a time will come when 
all those who are concerned in regulating its destinies will feel that 
it is for their advantage, as well as for the advantage of the Italians, 
that Italy should be in full possession of its capital.” 

Now it appears to me that this “moral support” will ensure to 
England the hatred of the one party, without conciliating or meriting 
the gratitude of the other. Our conduct towards the Italians in their 
hour of conflict resembles the charity of the apostle James’s senti¬ 
mental philanthropist, who said to his indigent brethren, “ Depart 
in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding he himself gave 
them nothing that was needful to them;” and then, when they 
reached ground, we, like Johnson’s patron, 11 encumber them with 
the help ” of our gratulations and encomiums. On the other hand, 
Austria, our ancient and faithful ally, and all the exiled princes, at 
whose courts our well-salaried ministers were permitted to continue 
until the day of their calamity arrived, most cordially detest and 
despise the British Government. 

As they know that we would, if we durst, have been “ willing to 
wound,” they owe no thanks to us for having been “afraid to 
strike; ” and they perceive little difference between the ruffian who 
knocks you down, and the bystander, who gives him every encourage¬ 
ment, and congratulates him upon his victory. Why should they 
regard us as a neutral power, when, according to our own statement, 
we have inflicted upon them greater injury by our connivance and 
approval, than their adversaries could have achieved by our alliance 
and our armies? The animus of Britain towards them may be 
inferred by the rabid and ungovernable eagerness with which the 
whole nation exclaimed, “ So would we have it,” as soon as, or even 
before, their dynasties were dethroned. 

“ Many persons in all parts of Europe will gradually learn to regard 
the King of Italy as the legitimate' owner even of the 'provinces which he 
has not yet reduced to subjection.”—Saturday Review. 

“In the present instance, the King of Italy will at once be cor¬ 
dially acknowledged by England, nor will the President of the States 
which still call themselves United, be backward in similar demon¬ 
strations of good will.”— lb. 

“Although Messina still holds out on the Straits, and Civitella 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 273 

del Tronto on the Garigliano, Victor Emmanuel can now assume, 
without contradiction, his title as King of Italy.”— Saturday Review. 

“Modern right has been proclaimed in London. Now modern 
right is nothing but the glorification of force, and accomplished facts 
supported by your principles. I annex Portugal, to which I have, 
at least, as much right as Piedmont has to Naples. It must be 
be admitted, that the new right is a death-blow for little Portugal. 
In the present day there is no occasion for any casus belli before attaching 
one’s neighbour, as it is not even necessary to give notice before cross¬ 
ing the frontier; and, since success is everything , the road to Lisbon 
lies open to the Spaniards; all they have to do is to choose their 
time well, and act with promptitude.”— Montalembert. 

The German Sovereigns, who have for ages governed their re¬ 
spective dominions, by unchallenged and incontrovertible right, must 
look with jealousy and distrust upon British aspirations and desires. 

“The Prussian Chamber has declared, by a small majority, that 
‘ it is not for the interest of Prussia or Germany to oppose the con¬ 
stitution of an united Italy.’ Indeed, Italy has set Germany an ex¬ 
ample, of ivhich the latter will not fail to avail herself before long. The 
interests of the two nations are identical; and it is certainly not to 
the credit of Germany, a big country at all times, free from foreign 
rule, and for several years blessed with institutions, which allowed of 
a certain degree of free utterance of religious and political opinion, 
and which provided for commercial and intellectual union, that poor 
trampled, dismembered, besotted, priest-ridden Italy should have led 
the way in the path of national unity. However, a German Empire is as 
likely to be shortly built up as any Italian kingdom is on the eve of 
being constructed; and there is no shade of a reason why the two 
nationalities should clash,—no reason why they should not rather 
aid one another in upholding their own against the whole world.”— 
Times. 

"We may now listen respectfully to the ipsissima verba of the ac¬ 
credited Imperial Proteus. 

“The Italian Government has no efficacious sympathies but ours. 
On the other side of the Channel it has the theoretical sympathies of 
England. In Central Europe it has been recognised through our 
support. But were it in difficulties, I think Italy would nowhere 


274 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


find such flags and eagles as have already protected its efforts. I am 
not certain that the impatient aspirations of Italy are wise, but I am 
certain that the interest of France is opposed to the abandonment of 
Pome. Let a liberal combination be sought to conciliate the Papacy 
with Italy, which I do not think impossible, but do not ask us to 
sacrifice the policy of France to one single pretension.” 

“ In an English despatch, of which our Minister declined to accept 
a copy, an appeal was made to a great principle—that of national 
sovereignty—against our occupation at Pome. True it is, that we 
have recognised this principle, but in so doing, we have made an 
exception as to the 700,000 subjects who remain under the temporal 
power of the Papacy; we have declared, that there are considera¬ 
tions of a superior order, which required that this grand principle 
should sometimes, in the interest of the peace of the world, be veiled 
and unapplied” ! !— Billault. 

When the Bonapartist eagles are gathered together, it is solely 
for the purpose of carrying out the grand “ idea ” of preying upon the 
murdered carcase of a nation’s w'ealth, and of a nation’s liberty. 
The difference between the conduct pursued by France and England 
in reference to the Italian “ sick man,” may be compared to that of an 
English and French physician, in the case of a patient, for whom 
both appeared to be deeply interested. The English Esculapius, 
however, declined to incur any personal responsibility, but made fre¬ 
quent inquiries as to the state of the patient, and the success of the 
treatment. It was at last ostentatiously announced, that a cure had 
been effected, although, apparently, ah. the worst symptoms were 
aggravated rather than assuaged. The non-interfering doctor was 
amongst the foremost in leaving his card and his compliments at the 
door of the convalescent, and though he had not contributed to the 
auspicious result by the excellence of his prescriptions, assumed no 
small credit to himself for the efficacy of his prayers. The French 
practitioner, on the other hand, volunteered his gratuitous assistance, 
and in his disinterested zeal for carrying out his “ idea,” hastened by 
an express train to the invalid’s dwelling, and by dint of bleeding, 
blistering, and brisk cathartics, which seemed rather to enfeeble and 
exhaust him, removed, as he himself maintained, the disease; but, 
in the judgment of others, redoubled it. The surprise, however, was 
almost as universal as the indignation, excited by the announce¬ 
ment, that, after having so long and so loudly paraded his entire 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TITE BONA PARTES ? 


275 


exemption from every selfish, motive, ho not only exacted an enor¬ 
mous fee, but had previously stipulated in secret for the surrender of 
two large farms, which had for centuries been in the possession of 
the patient’s ancestors, and, by force and fraud, compelled the 
reluctant tenantry, who knew that, by the transfer, their rents and 
burdens would be grievously augmented, to petition for the fulfil¬ 
ment of the bargain. 

It is an important admission on the part of M. Billault, that the 
abandonment of Rome is refused, because French interests require 
its continued occupancy. This is, in truth, the “ consideration of a 
superior order,” which requires that the grand principle of national 
sovereignty should be “veiled.” It is evidently the Man of Decem¬ 
ber’s intention to retain possession of that territory, until means 
shall be devised for conciliating the Papacy and Piedmont; a task 
about as hopeless as that of squaring the circle, or proving that the 
Re galantuomo is an honest and virtuous man. 

Let us again notice a few important considerations in reference to 
the condition and prospects of Italy. 

I.—The Man of December. 

I maintain, that it is solely through his sinister and selfish 
meddlesomeness that Italy has been duped, dismembered, and 
degraded. No honest or out-spoken Italian can, or does, dissent 
from this proposition. 

“Della Gfattina intimated, that the Emperor could not keep the 
French garrison in Rome because he cared for Catholicism, since he 
had no religion; because he had a personal regard for Pio Nono, 
since he was well aware that the Pope hated him, and would, if he 
could, topple him from his throne with the greatest pleasure in the 
world; because he had any real regard for Italian unity, since a word 
from him would prevent Austrian aggression.”— Scotsman. 

11 It is France alone who gains by this disorder, which divides our 
strength and paralyzes our action; it is France who contrives to 
throw on the Pope and the Bourbon the infamy of a. diabolical 
policy, of which she is the first author .”—Italian Paper. 

“Already, to those who throw in these people’s teeth the charge 
of ingratitude, answer is made, that the Emperor’s good deeds to 
Italy ended at Villafranca, and that ever since that peace , Napoleon III. 

s 2 


276 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


has done , or attempted and endeavoured to do them , infinitely more harm 
than goodd' — Times. 

11 Napoleon’s weighty reasons for not withdrawing his troops from 
Rome are , and always were , purely personal. Koine was an instrument 
in his hands for thwarting the efforts of the Italians towards their 
unity, for opposing that unity for ever, or at least adjourning it till 
the Italians have either accepted his conditions, or made themselves 
subservient to some of his hidden views.”— Ih. 

“ France has backed the Pope in his pretensions ; she stayed the 
Bourbon in his ignominious downfall. Her admirals took him by 
the hand at Gaeta; her ambassadors and generals became his tools 
at Kome. That brigandage, which the last Neapolitan stronghold 
initiated, the Eternal City is now bent upon perpetuating. Had it 
not been for the four weeks’ armistice at Gaeta, had it not been for 
the worse than enigmatical attitude of the French fleet in those 
waters, no Bourbon cut-throat would have dreamt of taking to the 
hill or. the bush. Had not the landmarks of victorious Italy been 
by main French force driven back from Yiterbo, from Tivoli, or 
Civita Castellana, brigandage would long since have been hemmed 
in within the walls of the Papal City, and the eyes of Europe would 
not now be shocked by the sight of nameless outrages; we should 
be spared endless tales of ruthless cruelty, and hardly less inhuman 
retaliation.”— Liberal Taper. 

“ Italy is warned not to listen any more to the Imperial Mephisto- 
pheles. All he wants is the frontier of the Khine. He wishes to 
juggle Italy out of her assistance for that purpose, and finally to 
leave her in the lurch, with his hand more tightly than ever grasped 
on her throat.”— Press. 

“Only Garibaldi, hurried on by an imprudent enthusiasm, 
seriously thought of opposing France by force; and this act gave 
the Government an opportunity to show its patient respect for 
the French alliance. Although suffering to the utmost from the 
crimes of the brigands, it did not hesitate to attack and disperse the 
band which Garibaldi had collected. At whatever pain to the 
feelings of the Italian nation, the popular chieftain, the conqueror of 
the Neapolitan kingdom, was defeated, captured, and lodged in 
prison. ”— Times. 

“France can undoubtedly burst Italian unity asunder; but it is 
France only that is equal to the murderous task, and she must 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 277 

achieve it by an open, deliberate attack, in defiance both of the 
strenuous resistance that the Italian people would not fail to offer, 
and of public opinion in all Europe, which would scarcely be satisfied 
with a vain verbal protest.”— Times. 

“The revolutionary ‘ Comitato Veneto ’ is moving again, but its 
doings merit little or no notice, as it is impossible that the Venetians 
can get rid of the Austrian yoke without powerful foreign assistance. 
Military engineers maintain that the famous Quadrilateral is well- 
nigh impregnable ; and, not long since, a renowned Russian general 
said, that a couple of hundred thousand determined men could 
defend Venetia against all the forces that France and Italy are able 
to bring into the field.” 

“ Why was the strong position of the Quadrilateral assigned to 
Austria after the great contest with Napoleon ? It was because 
Europe wished Austria to hold a position strong enough to keep 
France in check. Who will say that France does not need to 
be kept in check now? Austria holds Venice, not only to protect 
her own southern dominions, but also to discharge a trust which 
Europe has committed to her.”— Saturday Review , 1860. 

I am certain that, by retaining possession of Venice, the Emperor 
is only doing justice to Austria, to Germany, and to the world. 

“ Napoleon, it is felt, may keep the Pope in Pome—may yield his 
aid to Bourbon brigandage ; he may perpetuate the grievous dis¬ 
orders with which the country is afflicted; he may overrun all Italy, 
he may let the Austrians loose upon it; but there is something in 
the Peninsula he can neither bend nor break, and that is the upright 
mind, and brave heart, and iron will, of Baron Picasoli. No honest 
Italian is willing to deprive the country of this invaluable moral 
Palladium. ’ ’— Times. 

“ He (the Man of December) had gone too far to recede; he could 
not hope to regain the lost confidence of Continental Courts, or to 
divest himself of all responsibility for the consequences of the cam¬ 
paign of 1859. In spite of M. Thouvenel’s assertion that ‘France 
has no obligations towards Italy except those assumed by the Treaty 
of Zurich,’ the Emperor knew better. He knew, that, in the opinion 
of many Italians, the merit of his intervention in Lombardy was 
almost neutralised by his intervention at Pome, and that the time 
was come when open countenance must be substituted for secret 



278 . OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

connivance, unless France was to resign to England lier place as 
the benefactor of Italy. He had felt the force of European censure 
in the Savoy transaction, and saw that his opposition to the annexa¬ 
tion of the central provinces, had exposed him to the imputation of 
seeking dynastic interests in Italy.”— Times. 

“ The intentions of the French Emperor towards the country which 
he called to the enjoyment of free existence, are clear to no man here, 
but serious apprehensions are entertained, in most quarters, that the 
ultimate drift of his whole policy, is to secure so paramount an 
ascendancy over the Italian Peninsula, as to drag it along with him, 
in pursuance of hidden ambitious schemes, less as a grateful and 
trusty ally, than as a helpless, passive satellite. To foil these designs, 
to break through the toils of Imperial cunning, Italy has no safer 
means than the proud, single-minded, uncompromising strength of 
will of her patriot-Minister. The greater the danger with which a 
people fancy their independence may be threatened, the more open 
and arrogant and peremptory the tone assumed by their mighty 
neighbour, the stronger the necessity to cling to the man, whose 
well-tried uprightness and consistency are above suspicion. Any 
word breathed against Picasoli by the Pays , and other semi-official 
organs of the French Government, had, of course, the effect of raising 
him in the estimation of all men who are not prepared to accept the 
Emperor’s will as law to the west and south of the Alps.” 

11 It was not difficult to see what France and her Emperor gained in 
the Italian campaign, but the position of Italy in consequence was 
not so clear. She, however, must show great deference to France, 
and was pledged to hostilities with Austria, with which she could 
not cope single-handed. Italian finances were also now disturbed, 
taxes heavier, and no statesman occupied the place of Cavour in 
public estimation, and the King and Ministry knew they could not 
safely trust the Mazzini party, who were the most strenuous for 
prosecuting the war. The policy of France was hostile to the forma¬ 
tion of a single Italian kingdom, which would create for her a new 
rival, and lessen her preponderating influence in Italian affairs. 
The Emperor had refused to withdraw his troops from Home, 
without which the pacification of the Neapolitan States could 
never be accomplished; and he probably thought the continuance 
of a cause of dispute between Italy and Austria rendered both more 
dependent upon his influence and subservient to his policy.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


279 


The Daily News has the following conspicuous article, headed 
“From a Correspondent:”—“The project of an Italian Confedera¬ 
tion is by no means given up. The plan is to divide Italy into three 
parts—the one a Northern Kingdom, with Victor Emmanuel at its 
head; the second a Papal State, including Umbria and the Marches; 
the third a Neapolitan Kingdom, under Francis II. Venice would 
then be given to the northern kingdom. The great obstacle to the 
realisation of this plan is Baron Picasoli, but every kind of intrigue 
is at work to displace him, and it is thought, if Farini could be 
brought in, with Patazzi as nominal head, the Tripartite Italy might 
be formed, the Pope satisfied, and the phantom of one Italy sunk in 
the Ped Sea for ever.” 

“You see, gentlemen,” said the orator, “what an infernal policy 
this was. What was the situation of Italy ? Italy had the sym¬ 
pathy of Europe in her efforts to shake off the yoke of Austria. 
Austria was hated, and aroused a profound jealousy among the 
Powers of Europe. Now the violence, the ascendancy of Austria 
had ceased, and France had taken her place. By creating the 
Poman question, the Emperor had deprived Italy of the sympathy 
of Europe .”—Italian Parliament. 

“ Napoleon does not wish for an united Italy, or he wishes to 
obtain such guarantees as may satisfy France, a nation which at no 
cost would consent to the formation of a powerful State on her 
frontiers. He temporises and wavers, waiting events which are even 
now looming in the horizon, when he may have a reason, a pretext, 
to decide whether he is to crush this poor Italy utterly, or else drag 
her along as a handmaid, as an accomplice.”— Times. 

“ France proclaimed four principles with respect to Italy—inde¬ 
pendence ; non-intervention; the rights of a nation to its natural 
boundaries; universal suffrage. By remaining at Pome, she violates 
the principle of independence, that of non-intervention, that of 
natural boundaries, and, above all, that of universal suffrage; for 
the province of Viterbo proclaimed annexation to the Italian king¬ 
dom by 12,000 votes; yet France reconquered that province for the 
Pope, and that province is now tortured by the Papal cut-throat and 
by the French soldier, who most fraternally strangle it between 
them.”— II). 

“France has treated Italy, not as a vassal, but as a free Power. 
But, if she has abdicated her pretensions to a dominion beyond the 


280 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Alps, which, she has inherited from the old monarchy, could she 
renounce the right of her legitimate influence , and could she sacrifice, 
even to avenge a noble race, the interests of her own grandeur ?■ 
Would it be equitable, politic, or national? There are spirits in 
Italy sufficiently enlightened and impartial to enable us to say, No.” 
—Man of December. 

“If, therefore, new and greater changes shall take place, changes 
over which material force would be powerless, as the great mind of 
Cavour himself recognised, France, beyond the interests which she 
protects at Borne, has a right to expect from the initiative of the 
Italians themselves efficacious guarantees for the future (!!!) before 
she withdraws her hand and sword from Italian affairs.”— Man of 
December 1 s Organ. 

“This language, let every one be certain, is not inspired by any 
diffidence ; but it is neither in the interest of the dignity of France 
nor of Italian liberty that their alliance should impose upon them 
perpetual transactions. The more their respective interests are pro¬ 
tected, and the more their rights are guaranteed, by definitive 
stipulations, the more their relations will be dignified.”— lb. 

“ The spontaneous concession of guarantees would not stop Italian 
liberty; it would establish it. (! !) It would not be for France the 
satisfaction of a suspicious diffidence, but a necessary security (! !) 
j Against what and whom f] To determine the nature and extent of 
these guarantees is a work which belongs to diplomacy. Italy alone 
could anticipate it by a spontaneous inspiration of loyalty and grati¬ 
tude.”— lb. 

“We rejoice that neither the Government of the Emperor, nor 
France as represented by the Chambers, nor the opinion of the 
country as represented by the press, thinks of demanding from the 
King of Italy the sacrifice of Sardinia, so eminently Italian, and 
which would not separate without anguish and without mourning 
from the mother country. Let England, then, get rid of her dis¬ 
quietude, and let her statesmen cease to repeat against us unjust 
accusations. These accusations are withered by our disdain, when 
they do not fall before our loyal explanations.”— lb. 

“ France has besides offered to Italy striking proofs of how she 
meant to respect the independence of the nation which she has 
resuscitated from the tomb.” ! ! ! — lb. 

“For our part we have no taste for violent conquests, or forced 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


281 


annexations. Sardinia lias but very slight importance in our eyes. 

W ? have for our country more elevated views , and a wider ambition. JVe 
have the certain conviction that France has a right to a territorial aug¬ 
mentation far more important .” ! ! ! —Man of December’s Organ. 

So much for the Man of December’s unambitious disinterestedness. 
On whom is the scourge to fall next ? 

“The Italians are still busy at the task on which they have been 
engaged ever since the famous New Year’s greeting of the Emperor 
Napoleon to the Austrian Ambassador in 1859; they are toiling to 
solve the riddles of the Sphinx at the Tuileries ; they are trying to 
reconcile the alleged promises of their great ally with their actual 
fulfilment, jiutting together words with facts.”— Times. 

“ M. Favre had a very easy task when he invited the Chambers to 
observe how very little the French policy came to, and how un¬ 
worthy of a great nation were the shifts, and turns, and vacillations, 
by which Borne and Italy are kept in suspense by France. M. 
Tliouvenel, he remarked, used to keep the pendulum swinging back¬ 
wards and forwards; and now M. Drouyn de Lliuys has stopped it 
altogether, but no one produces any motion in advance.” —Saturday 
Revieiv. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:— 

“There is no man on earth who can, after the last three 
years’ experience, feel confident that the Emperor of the 
French will at any time be as good as his word.” —Liberal 
Paper. 

If the vote were fairly taken, and by ballot, I should be glad to 
see the following question decided by universal suffrage—namely, 
“ Is the Second of December a man, on whom it is safe to ride the 
water?” If every class were to vote separately, what sovereign in 
Europe would vote in the affirmative ? Not even Victor Emmanuel, 
if he could give a negative ball without detection. “The princes, 
the governors and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the coun¬ 
cillors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces ” of all realms 
would concur in a similar verdict, and so would, throughout the 
world, the great mass of the population. Not one native of Italy, 
be his politics what they may, would provide himself with a “si” 
ticket on the occasion. I believe, that Messrs. Bright and Roebuck 


282 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


would, without hesitation, propose and second the affirmative propo¬ 
sition ; but in every town and hamlet throughout Britain, except 
Manchester, the “noes” would overwhelmingly preponderate. 

“ When Napoleon tells us that it was impossible for him to take 
the revolutionary side without becoming the chief instead of the 
moderator of the Revolution, he pronounces the severest, possible censure 
upon himself \ and when he shows that he could not take the reaction¬ 
ary side without betraying his origin as the Elect of universal 
suffrage, he reflects with equal bitterness on his own conduct. Why did 
he, professing himself the enemy of revolution, give himself the 
signal for revolution, by the quarrel which he forced upon 
Austria on the first of January, 1859 ? Why, having commenced 
his career, and formally announced to the world the object which 
that career was to realise, did he suddenly stand still, in the very 
midst of success, in the presence of an obstacle, which the reve¬ 
lations as to the real state of the garrison stores, and fortress of 
Yerona, at the time of the battle of Solferino, show could not 
have offered any serious resistance ? Of what use is a Congress ? 
Will its protocols be observed with more respect , or be more lasting , than 
those of all previous ones ? Will not universal suffrage set at 
nought all its resolves ? And why should Garibaldi, or Victor 
Emmanuel, or the populations of the Pontifical States, be more 
bound by them than the Emperor Napoleon, when he took Lombardy 
from Austria, and Savoy and Nice to himself?”— Times, 1860. 

II.— Victor Emmanuel. 

My judgment, in reference to the past, present, and future 
destinies of Italy is (I am aware) unpalatable and unpopular in 
almost every quarter. I consider the interference of the Man of 
December in the affairs of that country to have been a curse and a 
calamity ; and that it was more prosperous, peaceful and free, before 
he crossed the Alps, than it is at the present moment, or is likely 
ever to become. Even supposing (which I deny) that it was 
enslaved to Austria, the only difference now is, that there has been 
a change of turnkeys, and that the scorpions of the new custos are 
more dreadful and more degrading than the whips of the old. The 
dispossessed sovereigns were far less dependent upon Vienna than 


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283 


the king of Piedmont is upon Paris, and were more than his equals 
in all the qualities which adorn the character either of a man or of 
a monarch ; and their ministers, though not so adroit or audacious 
as Cavour or Batazzi, were less astute, less arrogant, and less 
ambitious. 

Of King Francis II., personally, I know nothing whatever ; I have 
nothing to expect from his favour, and nothing to dread from his 
frown. He may, for aught I know, be a king “ of hot temper and 
limited capacity he may be ungainly in his person, ungrateful in 
his disposition, and ungracious in his deportment. He may have 
long cherished a laudable and disinterested anxiety for Italian unity, 
and even, through the medium of a base and barefaced minister, 
have entered into a secret treaty with Francis Joseph, in virtue of 
which Piedmont was to be annexed to Naples, and Sicily ceded to 
Austria, He may have professed the most unbounded respect for 
the Pope, and then, under false pretences, have stripped him of a 
large portion of his dominions, and intended to take possession of 
Pome as the metropolis of his Italian kingdom. His great ally and 
he may have conveyed to the Sicilians, in the face of disquieted 
Europe, the most solemn assurances, that they should never be handed 
over to Austria, at the very time when, through an organised farce 
of compulsory universal suffrage, they were about to be severed from 
the Italian pale. He may have outraged every law of God and man 
by his treacherous machinations against his nearest relatives and 
neighbours, lifting up his hand unto the Lord, the Most High God, 
and saying to each of the princes, ‘ ‘ I will not take from thee a thread, 
even to a shoe lachet, or take anything that is thine, lest it should 
be said that I have enriched myself at thy cost.” And had he done 
all this, and more, he would, if successful , have been encouraged and 
eulogised in the flippant balderdash of a jaunty British Premier, or 
the time-serving jargon of a British “ able editor.” But the 
youthful monarch has done worse (if possible) than all this. Ho 
has committed a crime which, in this world at least, “hath never 
forgiveness”—I mean that of being, unfortunate. “Les malheur- 
eux ” says Mirabeau, “ ont toujours tort—tort de 1’etre—tort de le 
clire—tort d’avoir besoin des autres—tort de ne pouvoir les servir ; 
il n’y a pas jusqu’aux torts qu’on a envers eux, qui ne tournent a 


* An expression employed by the Times as to the king of Piedmont. 


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leur prejudice. On cherclie a excuser sa conduite, en inculpant la 
leur. Tous les ingrats accablent de reproch.es ceux qu’ils ont trahis 
—tous les pusillanimes se plaignent de ceux dont ils desertent 
la cause.” 

“A few days since, the French Minister called again on the ex- 
King of Najiles, and, in the name of the Emperor, begged that he 
would leave Rome, as his presence here compromised the interests of 
His Holiness. To this gracious message the ex-King replied by a 
direct and positive refusal. He was established here in his own 
house and home. He had been nobly received as a guest by His 
Holiness. He had accepted that hospitality, and was determined to 
profit by that goodness, without understanding how such a decision 
could compromise His Holiness.”— Times. 

Had Francis II. been such a character as I have described, 
the epithet of “ honest” is the very last which I should have 
expected to see prefixed or added to his name; and yet this is 
the designation which British publicists and patriots most lavishly 
bestow upon Victor Emmanuel. Our great bard says in reference to 
Othello, 

The Moor is of a free and open nature, 

That thinks men honest, who hut seem to he so. 

But what must be the “ nature ” of the bland and blinded sycophants, 
who call such “great” men honest, as have laid aside even the 
semblance of that virtue, and in repeated instances, but especially 
in the case of Savoy, have deceived and scandalised universal 
Europe ? I question whether even in Scotland, where the compli¬ 
mentary adjunct is often employed without much nicety of discrimi¬ 
nation, you will ever hear the expression, “ Cavour—honest man ! ” 
His word would, I have no doubt, be as good as his bond, but 
neither would have much weight in the courts of conscience or of 
Chancery. It is before, and not after, the detection of his guilt and 
guile, that Othello says concerning Iago— 

This fellow’s of exceeding honesty. 

And there might have been some excuse for entertaining such an 
opinion as to a certain blunt and bluff potentate, before his frauds 
and fallacies were unmasked. But how can such a judgment co-exist 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


285 


with, the knowledge of the total and terrible contrast between his 
declarations and his deeds ? after his professed respect for the time- 
honoured rights of the other Italian dynasties, his veneration for the 
head of his Church, his acquiescence in the treaty of Villafranca, 
and subsequent acceptance or retention of the states which that 
treaty restored to their rightful owners; his assurances to Nice and 
Savoy, that they should never be surrendered to a “ magnanimous ” 
ally; his maintenance of an ambassador at the court of the King of 
Naples, whose dynasty he was preparing to dispossess and to de¬ 
throne ; his solemn and angry disclaimer of all participation in the 
preconcerted invasion of Sicily? If a modern Moliere had, in a 
drama entitled “ Le Tartuffe Boyal,” introduced a scene in which 
all these “devices and desires ” of an unscrupulous potentate were 
successively enumerated, the expression “ l’honnete homme! ” might 
have been introduced at the end of each recited delinquency, but 
only by way of sarcasm, and not of approbation. Had Elisha 
flourished in our day as a denouncer of God’s judgments against 
perfidy and dissimulation, and seen that, in the cases of both minister 
and monarch, every overt act was an outrage, every protestation a 
perjury, and every conquest a crime, the indignant prophet would 
have summoned them before him, and exclaimed, “Is it a time to 
receive money, and to receive jewels, and olive-trees, and vineyards, 
and hounds, and horses, and parks, and palaces, and promises ? 
The leprosy, therefore, awarded against greed and double-mindedness, 
shall cleave unto you and unto your seed for ever.” And they would 
have gone out from his presence both “ lepers white as snow ! ” 

The very newspapers, which most strenuously contend for the per¬ 
manence of his usurpation, are often the loudest in denouncing his 
delinquencies and defects. 

“ They believe him to be weak , and especially liable to petticoat influence; 
and they know that he is surrounded by a circle of very unreliable 
men and women. They know, too, that the pressure from Paris is 
active and persistent in urging such a regime as that of the Emperor 
Napoleon.”— Liberal Paper. 

“For myself, I fully believe that attempts of this kind are being 
made to work upon the mind of the King. I am inclined to believe 
also, that they have had some effect upon him; but I am firmly con¬ 
vinced, that he never could be guilty of the political infamy urged 


286 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


upon him. I feel quite satisfied that this snare spread by France 
will fail, as others have done.”— Liberal Paper. 

“In order to procure himself such illustrious allies, Victor 
Emmanuel has not stuck at sacrifices. Without any hesitation he 
relinquished two provinces, and , of all others , precisely those whence his 
family derived their origin. He has not shrunk either from wounding 
the hand that presented to him the larger and fairer half of his new 
kingdom; and whilst rejoicing in his palace, and revelling in nuptial 
festivities, the hero of Italy, his benefactor, and one of the very best 
of mankind, lay stretched on a bed of pain, with his son at his bed¬ 
side, wounded by the same ungrateful hand.”— lb. 

“ There is no doubt that the removal of the Government to Naples 
would be a great, momentous, and we may say it, almost desperate 
experiment; but the position of the country is in itself most critical. 
Italy is contending against extreme evils—evils of a nature to justify 
extreme remedies. Father than run the risk of losing Naples, of 
undoing all that has been done, of compromising that unity which 
has been almost providentially achieved, it certainly behoves the 
Italians to be bold, and even rash.”— Times. 

“ The misfortune is, the King personally cares nothing about the 
governing forms of his country or political parties. He is loyal and 
honest, and will keep to his constitutional principles; but he takes 
very little interest in State affairs. He loves a quiet country life, 
with the amusements of the field when not soldiering.”— Liberal 
Paper. 

“ There seems to be sufficient evidence that the Minister is 
habitually a jobber. He has scandalised his countrymen by 
giving a place to the King’s Secretary, in return for services 
which scarcely bear explanation.”— Saturday Review. 

“ The universal complaint throughout the country is that there is 
no Government.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The visit of the King seems now to be deferred till next month, 
and if the importance of the Koval presence among those fickle and 
impressionable people be properly understood in Turin, it will not 
be postponed much longer. It is, of course, impossible that a Sove¬ 
reign should be always making the round of his dominions; but the 
position of Naples is so exceptional that it will be politic, until 
Italian unity is more complete, that the people should have a fre¬ 
quent opportunity of familiarising themselves with the name and 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


287 


appearance of their Sovereign. ‘ Which King is coming ? ’ said a 
person to me yesterday.”— Times. 

“ If Garibaldi has taken the lead in the question of Home, it is 
because for the last fifteen months the Government has abandoned 
that lead, and has remained far behind the opinions and wishes of 
the people. Twenty millions of Italians are sick of following the nod of 
any potentate , hoivever powerful he may he ; they will not be trifled with 
any longer. Let the Government persuade itself of this, and assume 
an attitude more worthy of Italy. The Italian question must go on 
towards its legitimate settlement; if the Government is too timid to 
lead, it must expect to have the lead taken out of its hands.”— Liberal 
Paper. 

“So long as the Venetian and Koman questions are unsettled, 
there can be no peace for Italy.”— Ih. 

“ The Italians are collecting this enormous army because they are 
convinced that Italy can have no real and enduring independence 
while Austria holds the Quadrilateral.”— Saturday Review. 

“What has Louis Napoleon already made of Victor Emmanuel, 
if not a vassal of France ? That King of Italy , whom the 1 disin¬ 
terested’’ promoter of the war against Austria pretends to have enfran¬ 
chised , can neither take a step , nor entertain a thought , that it is not 
dictated to him by his ( disinterested ’ champion at the Tuileries. In 
the prosecution of his object to bring about such a state of 
things, it must be acknowledged that Napoleon has been very 
greatly aided by the character and temperament of Victor 
Emmanuel himself.”— Liberal Paper. 

His * subtilty hath chose this doubling line 
To hold him f even in; not so to fear J him, 

As wholly put him out, and yet give check 
Unto his farther boldness. 

Ben Jonson. 

In one respect, the Piedmontese vassal has the advantage over his 
liego lord. He can say with perfect truth— 

J’ai par dessus vous 
Ce plaisir si flatteur a ma tendresse extreme, 

De tenir tout, Seigneur, du bienfaiteur que j’aime— 

De voir, que ses bontes font seules mes destins— 

D’etre l’ouvrage heureux de ses augustes mains. 

Voltaire. 


* The Man of December. 


+ Victor Emmanuel. 


J i. e., frighten him. 






288 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


‘ 1 There are many persons who labour under very painful appre¬ 
hensions as to the King’s intentions and dispositions, and who think 
that the result of the present crisis will be a mere Cabinet of lay 
figures, to keep the places till such time as a La Marmora-Katazzi 
combination may be reproduced .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ Here His Majesty is but little known, the more’s the pity, and 
our Neapolitans have got it in their head that the Consorteria , a real 
or imaginary body of men, are even making efforts, if not to wean 
him from the South, at least to detain him in the North.”— lb. 

Had the ex-Duke of Savoy possessed one spark of independent 
and honourable feeling, he would, long ere now, have said to his 
base and bullying accomplice— 

Se libero non sono, 

S’ho da servir nel trono, 

Non euro di regnar— 

L’impero io sdegno. 

A chi servande, impera, 

Le servitude e vera, 

E finto il regno. 

Metastasio. 

Honest Garibaldi’s advice to him would have been— 

Ne timor ne speranza 
T’unisca a lui— 

Ma forsennato, afflitto, 

Vedilo a tutte Tore 
Fremer di sdegno. 

Metastasio. 

at seeing himself rejected and outwitted. 

Quoi ? Je verrai, Seigneur, qu’on borne vos etats, 

Qu’au milieu de ma course on m’arrete le bras, 

Que de vous menacer on a meme l’audace, 

Et je ne rendrai point menace pour menace, 

Et je remercerai qui me dit bautement, 

Qu’il n’est plus permis de vaincre impunement ? 

Corneille. 

But Garibaldi ought also to say to the Man of December— 

Le Roi qu’une idee, et n’a de son pouvoir 
Que ce que par pitie vous lui laissez avoir. 

Corneille. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 289 

It is both ludicrous and lamentable to see the obstinacy with 
which the King of Piedmont still asserts what he cannot believe— 
that the Man of December is Italy’s best friend, and the Printing 
House Square authorities assenting to this proposition. He admits 
also, that he is only biding his time to make an onslaught on his 
neighbour’s territory, and disturb the peace of Europe. 

“At the time when Europe is rendering homage to the wisdom of 
the nation, it is painful to see young people, carried away by illusions 
and forgetful of the duty of gratitude due to our lest allies f * make of 
the name of Pome—that name which is the desire of all—the signal 
for war. When the hour for the accomplishment of the enterprise shall 
arrive , the voice of the King will make itself heard. Every other 
summons is that of rebellion and civil war. The responsibility and 
the rigour of the law will fall upon those who will not listen to my 
words. I shall know how to preserve the dignity of the Crown (? ?) 
and of Parliament, in order to have the right of demanding from the 
whole of Europe justice for Italy.”— Ex-Duke of Savoy. 

“We are glad to see that the King, though we do not doubt with 
the most sincere reluctance, has issued a proclamation warning the 
young, who have been especially addressed by Garibaldi, not to be 
carried away by illusions, not to forget the duty of gratitude due to 
the lest allies of Italy, and not to make the name of Pome, the desire 
of all, the signal for war. The King will speak when the hour 
arrives. Every other summons is that of rebellion and civil war. 
The responsibility and rigour of the law will fall upon those who 
will not listen to this appeal.”— Times. 

“A twelvemonth ago, one of the greatest patriots and most spot¬ 
less men of modern times, who had fought, won, and presented to 
his King a kingdom, was shot down by the agents of that King 
himself. We rejoice that the hero of Italy is still spared—though 
maimed for life, and with his most ardent friends can celebrate the 
day of Aspromonte, as the day when a righteous Providence saved 
from murderous weapons the man whom a base and ungrateful 
King would have sacrificed; but it will be many a day before Italy 
succeeds in expunging from her escutcheon the foul blot which 
Poyalty has put upon her.”— Scotsman. 

* The caricatures of the Emperor and Empress abound in the corners of every 
street in Naples, and the Government dare not suppress them. 

T 


290 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE3 ? 


“The Memory of Aspromonte. —Last week (says a letter of tlio 
12tli), General Pallavicini, tlie Kero of Aspromonte, dared to sKow 
himself in the theatre at Lugo. The moment he was discovered the 
house became empty. The very musicians in the orchestra, carried 
away by the current of feeling, retired too, and left the officer alone 
in the house. He did not stir from his seat, and the performance 
was played for his solitary enjoyment.”— Scotsman . 

What then must be the feeling of Italian “Liberals” as to the 
King who employed him ? 

“A letter from Turin, referring to Garibaldi’s new proclamation, 
in which he urges the Venetians to rise against Austria, assuring 
them that ‘ the people can do all that it wills to do,’ remarks on the 
singularly ill-chosen moment at which this appeal has been put 
forth, just when Austria and Prance are on good terms, and striving 
for a common object. The proclamation is attributed to the influence 
Mazzini is said to exercise over Garibaldi, and it is remarked with 
regret that, contrary to his previous custom, the General avoids all 
mention of the King.”— Times . 

“ The name of Garibaldi has a mysterious and mighty influence ; 
it is a great power; and in the actual position of the southern 
provinces the authorities never took a wiser step than that of giving 
full course to the popular, nay to the national sentiment.”— II. 

It is under such reservations as render its recognition insulting 
and illusory, that Bussia has resumed its relations with Piedmont. 
Quamdiic se bene gesserit. 

“The Government of Eussia has decided, subject to the distinct 
reservation that it is not committed on any question of right, to 
recognise the Government of Italy, to enter into diplomatic rela¬ 
tions with it, and to authorise its representatives at the different 
Courts to cultivate the same friendly and sociable intercourse with 
Italians as with the rest of the Diplomatic Corps.” 

The friends of revolution very justly conclude, that Victor Em¬ 
manuel will place himself at their head as soon as there is a pros¬ 
pect of success. 

“ Sire,—Your fellow-citizens will view, in the honour which your 
Majesty confers by receiving us, a new proof that force still keeps 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


291 


you afar from Rome. But ice know that your heart is with us. Rome 
suffers indignantly, but confides in your Majesty’s word. In every 
event, you will find in her people tlie energetic desire that justice 
may be done to Italy.” 

The character of a flagitious Roman Emperor, as delineated by 
one of our greatest dramatists, would, in Cavour’s mouth, have 
been singularly appropriate. 


Sleep, 

V oluptuous Caesar! and security 

Seize on thy stupid pow’rs, and leave them dead 

To public cares—awake hut to thy lusts, 

The strength of which makes thy libidinous soul 
Itch to retire—and I have thrust it on, 

With blaming of the city business, 

The multitude of suits, the confluence 
Of suitors, then their importunities, 

The manifold distraction he must suffer, 

Besides ill-humours, envies, and reproaches, 

All which, a quiet and retired life 
(Larded with ease and pleasure) did avoid— 

And yet, for any weighty and great affair, 

The fittest place to give the soundest counsels— 

By this shall I remove him both from thought 
And knowledge of his own most dear affairs, 

Draw all dispatches through my private hands, 

Know his designments, and pursue my own— 

Make mine own strengths, by giving sums and places, 

Conferring dignities and offices. 

And those that hate me now, wanting access 
To him, will make their envy none or less— 

For when they see me arbiter of all, 

They must observe. 

Ben Jonson. 

Widely as I differ from Garibaldi and Mazzini, I believe that 
they are the only two Italian liberals who are really sincere, straight¬ 
forward, and disinterested. All the most favoured ministers and 
most ardent partisans of Victor Emmanuel, have, like himself, 
proved to be selfish, false, and subservient to the Man of December. 

Et, bien a l’aise, et sans servir a rien, 

De la patrie ils vout manger le bien. 

Feorian. 

T 2 


292 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


But Mazzini and Garibaldi regard him and his partisans with 
detestation and distrust, because they themselves are honest, 
truthful, and in earnest. 

“Neither in our own old anti-Gallican caricatures—satirising 
Box, and Sheridan, and Grey—nor in the fierce pictorial lampoons 
recording the struggle between George IV. and his Queen, nor in 
tiie sharpest of the attacks made by Philipon on the Citizen King 
and the rule of the House of Orleans, can we find a heartier expres¬ 
sion of popular distrust and scorn than has been reflected from the 
lighter class of Italian periodicals in those attacks on the Patazzi 
Cabinet with which they have all lately teemed.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The taxes are only voted to the end of the month of December, 
and, more than that, the loan is not only indispensable but urgent. 
It was thought that to provoke a crisis in such a state of things 
would be to compromise public credit. The anticipated deficit for 
1860 is 400 millions of francs.”— Liberal Paper. 

“It is impossible to deny that Neapolitan brigandage has lately 
assumed somewhat alarming dimensions, and we shudder as we read 
in to-day’s papers that 150 galley slaves have broken loose from the 
bagnio of Girgenti, in Sicily—an incident which tells volumes as to 
the helplessness and inefficiency of the public administration in those 
parts.”— Lb. 

“I very strongly incline to the opinion that the first occasion of 
a political amnesty in the Neapolitan provinces—the first dawning 
of a more merciful dispensation—will be the advent of the French 
tricolours in Neapolitan waters, to which consummation everything 
is tending, through the medium of a republic and a provisional 
government. Letters received from an English friend at Naples to¬ 
day mention the great under-current of political excitement as 
increasing daily, both the reactionaries and the Garibaldians out¬ 
vying each other in hatred of the actual regime , which has not one 
friend left save the highly-paid employes of Turin.”— Standard. 

11 As for public security, it does not exist in Sicily. The murders 
are so numerous, so barefaced, so atrocious, that the operations of 
travel, of trade, of agriculture remain a dead letter save in the towns, 
and even there two or three open murders a day are the rule, and 
not the exception. The new journal, the Caprera , gives eight in 
six days in the vicinity of Palermo with all defails. The escapes 
from prisons are becoming commoner that ever, and as the detenute 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


293 


are mostly political one lias no great regret, but it shows the 
weakness of the executive and the complicity even of the prison 
authorities.”— Standard. 

“There are no less than 1,750 prisoners in the Viccaria prison 
untried, and the state of destitution, dirt, and neglect is such that 
the typhus fever is raging in it and carrying off numbers. As for 
the ‘brigandage,’ it is worse than ever; and the peasantry are 
becoming perfectly desperate.. I expect every day to hear of some 
terrible acts of reprisals in the Abruzzi, in consequence of the daily 
fusillations. This is the certain issue of the cruelties perpetrated by 
the Piedmontese, and the systematic murder of every leader who 
could have given humanity and civilised usage to the reaction. 
They have to deal now with an infuriated and desperate peasantry, 
and must take the consequences of their own acts.”— lb. 

“If the Queen’s heroism had not given the prestige it did to the 
Bourbon cause in its last stronghold, the revolution would never 
have cared to attack her as it has done and is doing. The entire 
privacy and estrangement from affairs in which both the King and 
Queen of Naples reside might serve to ensure respect for their exile. 
If Piedmont so misgoverns its newly-acquired provinces as to cause 
a chronic rebellion, why should they be made responsible for it? 
If the Neapolitan people call for a restoration, and failing that turn 
to Murat or Garibaldi, why should Francis II. be denied a home in 
the ‘ great asylum ? ’—a title heaven knows England has no right to 
quarrel with on political grounds, and certainly not France, with 
the nucleus of Polish “reaction” in Paris and her agents of revolu¬ 
tion in every country they can extract capital of discontent from. ‘ To 
raise the storm and then to ride it,’ is a policy pretty well exploded 
by this time, one would suppose. That it will be tried in more parts 
of the world than one is pretty certain.”— lb. 

“In all these respects the Italian army is sadly deficient. While 
their enemies are acquainted with every highway and byeway, and 
every stone upon them; while they are served by the inhabitants, 
from sympathy or fear, so well that every military movement is 
known long before it takes place, and every soldier counted before 
he comes in sight; the troops know nothing of the country, are 
ill adapted, in some degree from the very strictness of their dis¬ 
cipline, to this kind of guerilla warfare, and are betrayed or ill- 
served by a people who either sympathise with those who form 


294 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


a portion of themselves, or who fear mutilation or assassination.”— 

Times. 

“The evidences of confusion were everywhere, and we know not 
what might happen from one month to anothor.”— Speech in Italian 
Parliament. 

“ As to the political feeling of these districts, you will, of course, 
expect that it should be, as it is, if not hostile, at least not friendly 
to the Government. The conscription and the increased taxation are 
bitter pills to swallow, and the priests, whose class interests are 
opposed to all that is progressive, have excellent materials to work 
upon. Wherever they went, my friends were asked what was going 
on—when Francisco was coming back.”— Times. 

“Every one is occupied, of course, in trying to ascertain the causes 
of the untoward events which now, for two months more especially, 
have cast a gloom over the country, Ninety thousand men in this 
province, and yet property and person exposed to danger in so many 
districts.”— II. 

“ Taxes which absorb 80 per cent, of property. [Even if true, well 
invested in public works, and what will contribute to the grandeur 
of Italy.] Thousands of employes turned into the streets unjustly 
[many of whom were useless, put in for political purposes, and ill 
paid, lived by robbing the public]. 

“ Thirty thousand political prisoners ( ! ). 

“ Fifteen thousand shot and hanged, men and women, for political 
facts, those guilty of common crimes being spared. [Even if true, 
let the responsibility rest on Home.] 

“ The provinces in a state of siege. [Let home be responsible.] 

“ Desertions and discontent in the army (!).— Extract of Bourlon 
Proclamation , with Leadenhall Street comments. 

The Liberals and the Reactionists equally concur in distrusting 
and detesting the man whom Victor Emmanuel represents as Italy’s 
best friend, but who has, ever since 1859, been promoting carnage, 
jealousy, and discontent, besides showing on all occasions his 
arbitrary and insolent pre-eminence, acting just as Edward I. did 
in the case of his vassal King, John Baliol. The English press, too, 
is eagerly promoting the very system of coercion and cruelty on 
account of which it contended that the Bourbon dynasty had merited 
dethronement. 

“ It is a general social disorganisation which exists in many of our 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


295 


provinces, on which it is attempted to affix the impression of 
Francis II., but the die is cast in Home under the superintendence 
of Pope and Caesar, and, if no other influence can be exerted, 
diplomacy should stretch every nerve to procure the removal of 
Francisco from Pome (? ?), and the observance of something like 
international law and morality on the part of the Papal autho¬ 
rities.”— Times. 

“ Until now the attitude of France at Pome appeared to place her 
moral influence on the side of our enemies. But France has for 
some time manifested a more favourable disposition, and if she 
desires to make the arrest of the brigands a subject of complaint her 
influence in Italy will be weakened.”— II. 

11 The wanton cruelties perpetrated by the banditti who call them¬ 
selves the soldiers of Francis II. are so horrible as hardly to bear 
writing down.”— lb. 

‘ ‘ The recent capture of brigands by the Italian authorities at 
Genoa on board a French vessel in that port is believed to be likely 
to lead to a dispute between the two Governments.”— lb. 

“It is highly improbable that the seizure was made without the 
concurrence of the French authorities .”—Saturday Revieio. 

11 The parties are, one and all, under sentence of condemnation for 
a variety of crimes, among which murder, robbery, arson, extortion, 
swindling, &c., hold a prominent place. You may judge therefore 
of the excitement and indignation created among all classes of the 
Italian people at the peremptory demand addressed by the French 
Ambassador to our Government for the restitution of these men on 
the ground of a trifling informality in the mode of their capture.” 

“I send you to-night what I consider most interesting and im¬ 
portant documents relative to the ‘ Aunis ’ affair—which is settled, 
as far as Italy is concerned, by a strict adherence to the law. As I 
predicted, while admitting that it was ‘ Lex, dura lex, sed lex, ’ the 
proceeding has much increased the anti-French feeling, which has 
been growing up here for some time. The appeal of M. de Sartiges 
is thought, and as I consider justly, uncourteous in language and 
irritating in tone.” 

“ The Foreign Minister, turning to the French Government, says : 
—‘ You see our position; be indulgent and generous; do not insist 
upon the letter of your bond, and thus exposing us to the terrible 
storm which will be aroused throughout the country by compliance 


296 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


with your demands. You yourselves will by this exaggerated 
literalism lose your last hold upon the sympathies of Italy, already 
considerably diminished by the growing conviction that you are the 
principal obstacle to the unity of our country, and to the consolida¬ 
tion of our new institutions.’ 

“ The Italian people will warmly support the Government to the 
last extremity; for public opinion is roused to a point which would 
render any issue preferable to a policy of tame submission to the 
demands of our powerful neighbour.”— Times. 

“The France of yesterday says that the Turin Cabinet, while 
recognising the justice of the claims of France, fears to yield, as 
that course would expose it to the attacks of the advanced party; 
but thinks that ‘ satisfaction ’ will promptly be made to France— 
which in this affair has given Italy a fair sample of the bullying 
and jealousy which the Emperor Napoleon believes he has earned a 
right to exercise by his campaigns in behalf of Italian liberty.”— 
Scotsman. 

1 1 Fussia dreads an agitation through all her remaining Polish 
provinces, similar to that which has convulsed Italy since the establish¬ 
ment of a constitutional Monarchy in the Kingdom of Sardinia. ”— Times. 

“It is time to have done with all the sentimentalism and 
generosity which have been talked about humanity, spurious 
humanity, and the indignity of condescending to unworthy means of 
defence ” (!!!).— lb. 

“So the work of plunder, incendiarism, and murder proceeds; 
and sentimentalists in England and elsewhere talk of the necessity 
of moderation and consideration while inhuman savages are hourly 
perpetrating acts of the greatest ferocity” (! ! !).— lb. 

‘ ‘ In spite of the arrest of Tristany, Stramenza, and three colonels, 
the work of brigandage will go on, for the Italian Government is 
powerless to prevent it.”— lb. 

“It is indeed necessary that France, or at any rate, her ruler, 
should know the iniquities that are practised because he does not 
choose to prevent them. Admitting, though it be but for argu¬ 
ment’s sake, that the 20,000 French troops in the Papal States 
cannot spare men enough to watch the frontier effectually; ad¬ 
mitting, even, that no practicable amount of watching would prevent 
the nocturnal smuggling across of small bands of men and small 
convoys of arms, there yet is one thing which the Emperor Napoleon 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


297 


might do, and wliicli he owes it to himself to have done if he would 
not be considered a sleeping partner in the atrocities of the Sac- 
chitiellos and Gravinas. The root of the evil is to be sought in the 
presence at Rome of the ex-King of Naples. A letter from the 
Papal capital lately said:— 

“ 1 It has been stated that King Francis II., yielding at length to 
certain urgent entreaties, was on the point of leaving Pome. I 
learn, on the contrary, that the King and Queen are having repairs 
made in the Farnese Palace, which circumstance indicates a pro¬ 
longed stay there. Apartments are also being prepared for the 
Queen-Dowager, who is to return here with the two youngest of the 
four sons she took with her to the Chateau of Weilburg.’ 

“It is the most decided opinion of the persons best situated to 
judge, and it results from the extensive report on brigandage lately 
made for the Italian Government, that as long as the ex-King of 
Naples remains at Pome, and possesses means to foment the 
brigandage, so long will it be scarcely possible to put it down. 
From Pome money is sent to enable the assassins and ravishers who 
style themselves Bourbonist officers to recruit their bands and 
continue their campaign of crime.”— lb. 

“The Emperor Napoleon is reputed a humane man; he is con¬ 
sidered to have proved his sensibility to human suffering by the 
emotion he showed at the sight of the wounded and dying on the 
battle-fields of Italy. Can he read the accounts that daily are 
published of the cruelties perpetrated in the Kingdom of Naples, 
and not employ the means he has at his command of greatly 
facilitating their suppression by the Italian Government?”— lb. 

“The readiness of the Italian Government to afford every legiti¬ 
mate satisfaction to its ally will certainly respond to the friendly 
moderation of the demands of France .”—French Paper. 

“After narrating the circumstances which had induced him to 
arrest MM. Mordini, Fabrizzi, and Cal vino, Della Marmora said 
that he had read with the deepest regret the protest made by some 
of his colleagues against that arrest, and that he blushed to think 
that he had those three gentlemen for his colleagues in the national 
representation. No pen can describe the sensation which the reading 
of these last words created in the Chamber. Almost all the honour¬ 
able members left their seats, while an ominous groan, like the 
distant murmur of an angry sea, rose and fell and rose again.” 


298 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSniB THE BONAPARTES? 


“ The debate in the Turin Chamber of Deputies drags along like 
a wounded snake—as tortuous and feeble as the Piedmontese policy 
which it canvasses. The speeches of the first day were, however, 
interesting for the unwilling testimony which they elicited as to the 
miserable condition of the Italian populations which have been 
annexed to the Piedmontese dominion.”— John Bull. 

“ The excitement of yesterday’s and to-day’s sittings of the Italian 
Chamber of Deputies is almost without a precedent in the parlia¬ 
mentary annals of this or any other country in Europe.” 

“ Endless trouble, also, is likely to arise out of that exceedingly 
awkward job of the arrest of Mordini, Eabrizzi, and other deputies 
at Naples. The Government justified its unconstitutional act by 
asserting that those members of Parliament had been taken in 
flagrante delicto , or, as we should say, “red-handed;” but now the 
matter has been pressed home to the Ministers, and this pretended 
‘ flagrant guilt ’ turns out to be the ‘ seduction of some officers of 
the Boyal army from their duty in Sicily;’ a guilt, which even if 
could be proved, could hardly be considered “flagrant,” as the scene 
of the ill deed was Sicily, and the malefactors were only taken at 
Naples. The prisoners, however, indignantly deny the charge; the 
charge which, be it kept in mind, was only communicated to them 
a full fortnight after their arrest.”— Liberal Paper. 

“Not only the Opposition papers, but even some of the organs 
most heartily attached to the present Ministry, as, for instance, the 
Gazzetta del Popolo , very bitterly complain of the frequent seizure of 
several journals, which has lately been matter of almost daily 
occurrence. ’ ’ — lb . 

“ The Diritto and the Armonia of to-day have been seized for pub¬ 
lishing offensive articles against the Emperor Napoleon on the sub¬ 
ject of the late capture of brigands at Genoa.”— John Bull. 

“In Italy, the press suffers the consequences of the disturbed' 
state of the country. The director of the Pigoletto has been sen¬ 
tenced to 40 days’ imprisonment and 200f. fine. M. Salvatore 
Morelli, the director of the Pensiero , and the gerant of the same 
journal, have been-condemned by default by the Court of Assizes of 
Naples. The Terremoto , the Pensiero , the Campana del Popolo and 
Pagnotta of Naples, the Nuova Europa and the Scherzo of Florence, 
and the Bazar Politico of Palermo, have been seized.”— Liberal 
Paper. 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


299 


“Pasolini, tlius pressed, at last replied, ‘The King of Italy’s 
Government does not see any possibility of coming to an under¬ 
standing on the subject with tbe French Court, considering the 
point of view which the latter has lately adopted. "We must, there¬ 
fore, wait until the situation clears itself before we can propose or 
discuss anything.’ De Sartiges babbled a good deal about the sym¬ 
pathetic feelings of the Emperor towards Italy, the necessity of 
conciliating two great interests, and not compromising the results of 
the war of 1859 ; but the only answer he received was in the silent, 
attentive, gracious smiling gaze of Count Pasolini. De Sartiges 
gave up conversation, and departed more puzzled.” 

“The Minister of Foreign Affairs listened with attention to the 
remarks which, in a friendly spirit, I was led to make to him upon 
the dangers to the Italian Government of a policy which, by decla¬ 
rations too absolute, would embarrass its future action towards the 
Government of the Emperor. M. Pasolini ojyposed himself to the 
supposition that the present Cabinet could ever show itself ungrateful 
to France; ( ? ? ) and he insisted in his own name and in that of his 
colleagues upon their perfect determination to proceed in harmony 
with the Government of the Emperor, and to rely upon him.” 

“The exceptional law with respect to brigandage has been pro¬ 
mulgated in eleven out of the sixteen provinces comprising the conti¬ 
nental portion of the late kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the other 
five being declared free from brigands. By that law the Govern¬ 
ment receives the power to transport, or to send into the interior of 
the country persons suspected of complicity with the brigands, and 
also Camorristas. It is said that the transportations will be to the 
island of the Maddalena, near the western coast of Sardinia, and not 
far from Caprera.”— Times. 

“ The Stamp a of to-day publishes an article upon the new law for 
the suppression of brigandage promulgated yesterday, and regrets 
that certain special conditions connected with public safety have com¬ 
pelled the Government to declare eleven provinces infested by 
brigandage, although all of them are not equally agitated.”— II. 

“ Three members of the Parliament are arrested,*towards the end of 
August, at Naples, where the General La Marmora, in the quality of 
Commissioner Extraordinary, administers public affairs, as he did at 
Genoa in 1849. They are arrested and retained for forty days in 
the Castel Nuovo, up till the time when the amnesty was proclaimed, 


300 


OXJGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


as to which my honourable friends Fabrizzi, Calvino, and myself, 
declare that it does not concern us in any way.” 

11 Some of the political prisoners detained in the Naples prisons, 
writing to the Herald, give heart-rending details of the brutal treat¬ 
ment to which they are subjected. One extract must suffice :— 4 On 
one occasion, on a mere suspicion that Mr. Bishop had allowed a 
little water to fall from the window of his cell, he was threatened to 
be shot; a report was made on the matter to the sergeant of the 
guard, and for this alleged offence he was placed under lock and 
key for the space of four days, and prevented from receiving his 
brother’s visits and those of his companions in misfortune, and his 
punishment would have been greater, if the chief keeper had not in¬ 
terceded for him. Others have been spit upon, threatened with 
personal chastisement, and even subjected to blows. Some of them 
have been put to the torture, others shut up in horrid dungeons, 
and some, by beating and other ill usage, have been reduced to 
such a state as to pass blood. In order to extort confessions some 
were bound palm to palm and lashed with straps upon the fingers, 
while others were nearly suffocated by having filth thrust into their 
mouths.’ ” 

It is clear that Victor Emmanuel dislikes and distrusts Garibaldi 
and his partisans. 

II n’est plus mon sujet, qu’autant qu’il veut l’etre— 

Et qui me fait regner en effet est mon maitre— 

Pour paraitre a mes yeux son merite est trop grand 
On n’aime point a voir ceux a qui Von doit tant — 

Tout ce qu’il a fait parle au moment qu’il m’approche— 

Et sa seule presence est un secret reproclie. 

Corneille. 

Aussitot qu’un sujet s’est rendu trop puissant, 

Encor qu’il soit sans crime, il n’est pas innocent. 

CORNELILE. 


Sa temerite 

N’est qu’un pur attentat sur mon autorite ; 

II n’en veut plus dependre, et croit que ses conquetes 
Audessus de son bras ne laisscnt point de tetes— 
Qu’il est lui seul sa regie, et que sans se trahir, 

Des lieros tels que lui ne sauraient obeir. 

Corneille. 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 301 

C’est d’ordinaire ainsi que ses pareils agissent— 

A suivre leur devoir leurs, hauts fails se ternissant— 

Et ces grands coeurs enfles du bruit de leurs combats, 

Souverains dans l’armee, et parmi leurs soldats, 

Font du coinmandement une douce habitude 
Pour qui l’obeissance est un metier bien rude. 

Corneille. 

“ The Government which treats us—us who have taken arms for 
the national unity to the cry of ‘ Italy and Victor Emmanuel ’—worse 
than it would dare to treat the vilest criminals, is endeavouring to 
excuse itself to public opinion by official lies. We demand light, 
air, room, motion; permission to obtain necessaries at our own 
expense, and to make known to our relations and friends where we 
are and how we are. Grant us this ; cease to tell lies and to deceive 
our families and country.”— Garibaldian Prisoners. 

“ Of course, it was not likely that a Government like that of tho 
King of Italy, having at its head the representative of that old and 
famous House of Savoy which was never wanting in courage on the 
field of battle, would fall without an effort” (???). 

“It would in a high degree contribute to her peace of mind, to her 
dignity, to her honour, if the men at the head of the Government 
were to find sufficient courage in their hearts to lay the plain truth 
before them, and to consult with the representatives of the nation as 
to what it were best to do—supposing the solution of the Roman 
question to be adjourned till doomsday, as it is too likely to 
be.” 

“There are 10,000 questions in abeyance, to which a solution will 
have to be found—the re-convocation or dissolution of Parliament, 
the split and disorganisation in the Ministry, the resignation of three 
or four of the members of which will have to be announced, the 
cooling relations with France, the everlasting Roman question, 
Garibaldi, his trial or his amnesty, the state of siege in the Two 
Sicilies, the arbitrary arrest of deputies—a hundred deeds and 
misdeeds, all to be accounted for by the Government.” 

“ The ill-advised expedition of Garibaldi, the wavering, unsteady, 
and unprincipled administration of the Ratazzi Ministry, their 
frequent removal of important functionaries, and their appointments 
made rather in obedience to party views than to the fitness of 
persons to places, have greatly contributed not only to keep up 


302 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONARABTES ? 


popular agitation, but also to shake the authority and paralyse the 
activity of the Government. ” 

The two most prominent elements in the position of the Ex-Duke 
of Savoy are (1), that he is personally unpopular, especially as 
having brought to Naples “not peace, but a sword;” and (2) that 
he is the liege, or rather the lacquey, of the Man of December, 
whom every honest man in Italy abhors. 

“Victor Emmanuel II., King of Italy, left Ancona yesterday 
morning, at seven o’clock, by a special train, which conveyed him 
to Turin in time for his dinner in the evening. The people of his 
good and faithful city of Ancona are grieved at this abrupt de¬ 
parture, and complain that their sovereign only ‘ came to sleep ’ 
within their walls. They had prepared grand balls and other 
festivities, which, of course, had lost all their attractions without 
the charm of the Koyal presence. I heard the very lowest people 
in the streets distress themselves about the ‘slight’ which has 
been put upon their old town; and the same lamentations, as you 
know, are made at Florence, at Bologna, at Naples, wherever the 
early-rising, restless, unwearied King hurries through at his own 
wild huntsman’s speed.” 

“ ‘Garibaldi’ and ‘ A Roma ’ were the cries repeated continually 
—‘ A Roma con Garibaldi ! ’ but I heard not once, or scarcely once, 
the name of the l Re Galantuomo' 1 shouted. Who in the south 
knows the King of the Alps? His Majesty must come here, and 
make himself personally known, brave, and generous, and honest 
as he is.” 

“ The Piedmontese regarded the article in the Pays as an intima¬ 
tion that their Ministry must be chosen, not for deserving the con¬ 
fidence of the Italian Parliament, or for their own sovereign, but at 
the dictation of the French Emperor.” 

His ignominious recognition of the French ruler as the benefactor 
of Italy has excited strong feelings of discontent amongst his 
subjects. 

“France or the Emperor was treated without mercy, which was 
the signal for the Consul to withdraw. England was described as 
the mistress of liberty, a sentiment which was received with shouts 
of applause. As you may imagine too, the Government was spoken 


I 


OUGHT BfeAHCE TO WOBSHIB THE BONABABTES ? 303 

of in terms of groat distrust and censure, while the bare mention of 
tiie name of Garibaldi drove the vast assemblage frantic.” 

“Napoleon is not only the Soldat du, Pape , but also the willing 
accomplice of those very thieves and murderers whose deeds, he said 
himself, were a disgrace to the civilisation of Europe, and an 
outrage against the humanity of our age.” 

His policy has brought the finances of Italy into a state of un¬ 
paralleled embarrassment and confusion. 

“In to-day’s sitting of the Chamber of Deputies the Minister of 
Finance brought in a bill requesting the authorisation of Parlia¬ 
ment to contract a loan of 700,000,000 lire.” 

“Italian Five per Cents, have experienced a fall of nearly 1 per 
cent, on the news of a loan of £28,000,000 having been declared to 
be necessary to establish a financial equilibrium.” 

“The Minister of Finance, in his report to the Chamber, stated 
that the deficit on the 31st of December, 1862, was 374,000,000 
lire.” 

“Victor Emmanuel has not made that impression on the minds or 
the hearts of the Neapolitans which might have been desired. 
A rough soldier, and perhaps too honest a man to resort to those 
obsequious forms by which the Bourbons concealed the chains they 
threw around their subjects, he manifests but little anxiety to 
court the good opinion of his people.”— Times , 1860. 

It was, in my judgment, his misfortune to have placed his con¬ 
fidence in an astute and ambitious minister, who, though powerful 
in intellect, was destitute of integrity, and landed his sovereign 
in a state of danger, dependence, and disquietude. To the admirers 
of Cavour I would address the following five questions, in reference 
to his conduct and character:—Was it right on his part (1) to ally 
himself with the Man of December, who had subverted the liberties 
of France ?—(2)—to rob the Italian Princes of their dominions ?— 
(3)—to be (by his own admission) a conspirator for twelve years, 
whilst keeping up the semblance of amity with those whom he was 
preparing to circumvent and to dethrone ?—(4)—to sacrifice Nice and 
Savoy to the Man of December’s cupidity?—(5)—to persist, during 
many months, in solemnly denying the existence of any such design 
or agreement ? 


304 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


J’appelle un chat, un chat, et Cavour un fripon. 

Boileau. 

u Sir G. Bowyer said the noble lord the Foreign Secretary had 
told them that if Sardinia were ceded to France, there would be an 
end to intimate relations between the latter Power and England. 
But the noble lord said the same thing with regard to the cession of 
Savoy and Nice; and what came of it ? Nothing; not even an 
empty protest. The noble lord expressed very strongly in this 
House his vexation at having been duped by the Emperor of the 
French and by his friend, Count Cavour, and there the matter 
rested. Soon after the noble lord declared that the cession of Savoy 
to France would cause England to look elsewhere for alliances, one 
of the semi-official pamphleteers of Paris asked very pertinently 
where other alliances were to be found, and warned England that 
the policy of the two noble lords on the Treasury bench would tend 
to alienate from her every nation on the Continent. The cession of 
Savoy and Nice to France was in a great measure the result of the 
noble lord’s own policy; and if Sardinia were likewise ceded to 
that power, as he believed it would be, it might be traced very much 
to the same cause. 

“ The present state of things was at once the eulogy and the con¬ 
demnation of Count Cavour. It was the eulogy of his abilities as a 
Minister, because he, and he alone, with the aid of Garibaldi, pro¬ 
duced the revolution in Italy. It was his condemnation, because 
every Italian paper now stated that no dependence could be placed 
on the stability of affairs in Italy. With respect to Sardinia, what 
had we to trust to ? Hon. gentlemen thought that they had the 
support of The Times , the most influential paper in this country; but 
although that journal was now favourable to what was called Italian 
unity, it, on the 2nd of March last, thus described the conduct of 
Sardinia during the last two years :— 

“ ‘ An able publicist may convict Sardinia of a gross violation of 
Yattel, or even of higher authorities. Sardinia entered into a war 
against Russia, not being a party to the treaties respecting the 
Porte. Sardinia provoked Austria deliberately, and Austria fell into 
the trap laid by her enemy. Sardinia took advantage of the popular 
commotion to annex Tuscany and the Legations, although the Grand 
Duke and the Pope had taken no part in the war of 1859. Sardinia 
invaded the Papal States without a declaration of war, and under a 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 305 

shallow pretext. Sardinia connived at the expedition of Garibaldi, 
and reaped the fruits of his daring enterprise. Sardinia is pro¬ 
bably now meditating how she can reduce the most ancient sove¬ 
reignty in Europe to a name, and annex the city of Eome to her 
rapidly extending dominions. Finally, she threatens an attack on 
an empire with which she made a solemn peace less than two years 
ago, and does not conceal her desire to wrest the province of Venice 
from its legitimate master.’ ” 

“ Garibaldi said, Ghat he harboured no ill-will against Count 
Cavour, as he held him to be a man of eminent talents, though 
destitute of either soul or heart—a man never influenced by any 
generous or patriotic feelings, but simply engaging in politics as a 
sport, which at the same time ministered to his gambling love of excite¬ 
ment, and gratified his aristocratic ambition.’ ‘Earini and Eanti,’ 
he added, ‘ men who were once, or professed to be, true-hearted 
patriots, have now stooped to the meanest shifts of unprincipled 
compromises.’ ”— Times. 

“ Now Cavour—mind, this is not my reasoning, but that of many 
men of various parties—knows but few limits either to his power or 
his audacity.”— lb. 

“ It has been the practice of Count Cavour, a man born to under¬ 
stand, sympathise with, and utilise the weaknesses of his fellow- 
beings, whenever he heard of a millionaire banker, or of a successful 
agriculturist, possessed of more acres than brains, hankering after 
the vanities of the patrician caste, to convey to him, by some clever, 
underhand agency, a suggestion that a few thousands of his well or 
ill-gotten wealth would be well invested if he would endow a hospital, 
a school, or some other charitable or educational establishment, with 
a fund suited to its support or enlargement. The gudgeon understood 
wdiat was meant, he snatched at the bait, and when his spontaneous 
liberality had been sufficiently trumpeted about in the papers, the 
King came down upon the good Samaritan, and dubbed him a 
Baron or a Count, thus acknowledging his merits as a public bene¬ 
factor.” 

“Yet even this phoenix of kings has his foes and detractors ; and. 
Mazzini and his party never tire to whisper, * Victor Emmanuel is 
the son of Charles Albert; he is sure to betray Italy in the end, 
as his father did before him.’ There are pages of contemporary 
history which are not easily written; there are courtly transactions 

u 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


306 


from which the veil cannot be raised. Events cannot be traced to 
their real causes without the greatest caution and forbearance.” 

“ I do not hesitate to assert that the present capital of the Italian 
kingdom is about as flat and uninteresting a city as Carlsruhe or 
Stuttgardt, or any other German residence. Piedmontese life is at 
an end in Turin, and the place will never be fit for Italian life. In 
the first place, we have nothing like a Court here. The King is 
looked up to and beloved, but very nearly as invisible as the Grand 
Mogul; the Princes of the blood are now scattered here and there 
about the country, and even when at home they have their abode at 
Moncalieri, and hardly ever come to town except on Sunday morning 
for a hasty mass at the Poyal Chapel.” 

“ National revolution in Italy has as yet brought about no social 
change. Piedmont has swallowed Italy without being in the least 
degree Italianised. Cavour revolutionised the Government, but 
never troubled his head about reforming the Court.” 

‘‘ Cavour played a double part. He adopted two languages—one 
for secret agencies, discrediting the national party, yet whispering 
some hopes ; and one for State documents and diplomatic communi¬ 
cations, ignoring any thought of Italy, save as her condition im¬ 
perilled or embarassed the monarchy of Savoy. He believed that 
Cavour had, from his earliest days, the idea of independence firmly 
rooted in his mind, and that he never wavered in his intention of 
driving the Austrians beyond the Alps, and that any expressions or 
proposals of his to the contrary at any time were mere diplomacy. 
His sense of mortification and indignation at the peace of Yilla- 
franca was well known, which a telegram which he sent clearly 
showed. That telegram was as follows :—‘ Cavour to Picasoli.— 
Peace with Austria. I resign. Dukes back. All to the devil.’ ” 

“ On the 10th of February Sir J. Hudson stated that Count 
Cavour denied that there was any intention on the part of the King 
of Sardinia either to cede or to sell the territory of Savoy and Nice. 
That denial was given over and over again by Count Cavour. He 
had, however, no intention to mislead the English Government. 
They knew, from the conversations between the Emperor and Lord 
Cowley, that until the month of February the Emperor had not 
intended to demand the cession of the provinces. Lord Cowley was 
then told that the Emperor had determined to ask for the cession of 
Savoy and Nice. Count Cavour still resisted, and although M. 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 307 

Talleyrand was authorised at Turin to bring about this cession, 
Count Cavour, until about the 23rd of February, refused to listen 
to the demands of the Emperor. M. Benedetti was then sent to 
Turin to bring an additional pressure to bear. He was told to say 
that, unless the cession were made in sufficient time to be announced 
to the Legislative Assembly at its meeting in March, the Emperor 
would march his troops into Tuscany. He had received this fact on 
high authority. On the 25th of February Count Cavour, with pain 
and reluctance, ceded the provinces.” 

The Man of December might well have said to Cavour— 

Well dost thou scorn me, and upbraid my falseness— 

Could one who lov’d, thus torture whom he lov’d ? 

Thou think’st it must he hatred, dire revenge,* 

And detestation that could use thee thus. 

Congreve. 

“It is matter of common notoriety that the Prime Minister, 
whose manners were rather quick and abrupt, not only browbeat 
and flurried his Poyal master with something that savoured little of 
courtly ceremony, but, in one instance at least, wounded his feelings 
to the quick on a subject in which the King’s affections were deeply 
engaged, and made use of such harsh, coarse, and insulting lan¬ 
guage as no private person would have put up with.” 

“ Garibaldi veut Faction, et ne demande qu’a, marcher la tete levee 
et drapeau deploye ; Cavour ne cherche qu’a dissiinuler pour mieux 
se saisir de sa proie .”—Journal de Bruxelles. 

* “ Dire revenge” for having outwitted him, so as to baffle his artful scheme for 
appointing a Bonapartist Prefect at Florence, and Muratising the crown of the 
Two Sicilies. In surrendering a portion of Italy to become a province of France, 
Cavour’s feelings of self-reproach must have been painful indeed. 

Prezzo esecrando di esecrando ajuto 
Prestato .... andranne 
Parte si grande di cotan to regno 
Dei Franchi preda, e impunemente oppressa 
Sara poi l’altra del fallace Corso ! 

Alfieui. 

I here do give thee that, with all my heart, 

Which, hut thou hast already, witlx my heart 
I would keep from thee. 

Shaksfeare. 
u 2 


308 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


‘ ‘ Le Comte de Cavour, le chef du Cabinet Piemontais, a ete enleve 
a la vie terrestre par cette main puissante qui dirige les evenements 
des nations, sans qu’il lui ait ete accorde de voir s’achever 1’oeuvre 
a laquelle il avait consacre sa vie et a laquelle il avait travaille, pen¬ 
dant plus de dix ans, nonseulement avec une grande habilete d’esprit, 
mais aussi avec un rare dedain d’appreciation morale dans le choix 
des inoyens. L’ltalie a perdu en lui l’homme que l’on doit con- 
siderer de preference comme 1’auteur de la regrettable condition 
actuelle de la Peninsule, l’homme qui a apporte au Piemont quelques 
milliards de dettes de plus, et 1’a jete ainsi sur le chemin de sa ruine, 
dans le seul but de poursuivre une chimere que le temps, cependant, 
ne pourra jamais realiser. Le Comte de Cavour a, par sa politique, 
fait de l’ltalie la vassale de la France, et il a meme ete jusqu’a lui 
vendre quelques provinces du Piemont, dans un vain espoir d’en 
retirer de grands avantages; mais Foeil cherche inutilement 
quelque solide construction nouvelle a la place de ce qui a ete 
detruit. Cavour n’a laisse apres lui que des ruines et l’anarchie a 
toutes extremites du pays. C’est la ce triste resultat que Ton 
design e aujourd’hui du nom fastueux de Eoyaume d’ltalie.”— 
Journal de Bruxelles. 

“Les consequences de la mort de M. de Cavour commencent a se 
manifester dans le sud de la Peninsule. A Naples, des troubles ont 
eclate sous Faction du parti revolutionaire avance, qui a inonde la 
ville de proclamations ou se lisent ces phrases significatives:—‘ La 
droite du Seigneur a foudroye celui qui nous divisait et nous 
avilissait. Desormais il ne faut faire entendre qu’un cri: Hors 
d’ltalie tous les Cavouristes, hommes pires que les Croates. Vive 
l’ltalie une! vive Victor Emmanuel! vive un ministere qui soit 
digne de l’ltalie et du Eoi! mais avant tout, vive Garibaldi! ’ ” 

“ Une correspondance adressee de Eome a VAgence Ilavas rap- 
porte que le Saint-Pere, en apprenant la mort de M. de Cavour, 
s’est eerie: ‘ Mon Dieu, faites misericorde a cette ame egaree! ’ ”■— lb. 

“In the estimation of very many of them, such as Alfieri di 
Sostegno, Gallina, Des Ambrois, Massimo d’Azeglio, and other 
well-known and highly deserving patriots, Cavour himself was but 
a desperate, though a fortunate gambler. Ever since 1854, and the 
Crimean expedition, these worthy men have rather been dragged 
along by events than either mastered or properly understood them. 
Success hushed, but did not convince, them. Italian unity was a 


I 


OUCHIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 309 

great, sudden, dazzling phenomenon which bewildered them, but in 
the ultimate achievement of which they have no full faith.” 

The hatred and contempt which Garibaldi and Mazzini cherished 
towards the Man of December afford the most irrefragable proof of 
their straight-forwardness and sincerity. The obsequiousness with 
which Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, Eatazzi, and all the Piedmontese 
statesmen crouch at his feet, demonstrates their want of principle, 
honour, and consistency. Piedmont has, indeed, through his in¬ 
strumentality, gained a large accession of territory, but, by being 
reduced to a state of vassalage, she has paid an enormous price 
for her stolen and swindled acquisitions. Italy, on the other hand, 
has been a loser by his officious and selfish intermeddling, having, 
through fraud and violence, lost two provinces, which have, for 
ages, been included within her precincts, and by insidiously pur¬ 
loining which, he has shown that he is, in heart, Italy’s worst and 
most wily foe. Austria never pretended or proposed, that Parma, 
Tuscany, or Modena, should be annexed to the Imperial dominions. 

“Deferring to Joseph Mazzini as his revered friend, Mr. Stansfeld 
said he perhaps knew him better than any other man, English or 
Italian. He spoke of him when calumny the most unscrupulous, 
systematic, and incessant, had had the effect of deceiving many of 
the most liberal-minded and justly meaning of his (Mr. Stansfeld’s) 
countrymen. In 1848, Mazzini and his party were prepared to unito 
with monarchy, if monarchy would give itself to the unity of the 
country. It was Mazzini who planned the Sicilian insurrection; it 
was the same party who prepared the way for Garibaldi's entrance 
into the Neapolitan capital; and the same party who organised and 
despatched the great bulk of those brave volunteers, who gained 
Naples and Sicily for the new kingdom. And yet that man was an 
exile, and could only visit his native country at the risk of his life.” 

III.— Italian Parliament. 

It has been justly remarked that it is impossible to improviser a 
House of Lords. If we may draw any inference from the experience 
of Italy, the same remark is equally applicable to a popular Repre¬ 
sentative Chamber. The Italian Parliament seems to resemble an 
awkward squad of raw recruits, who are chiefly omployed in 


310 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


“marking time,” without advancing a single step. Its proceed¬ 
ings are often characterised by confusion worse confounded, and 
no public assembly is more remarkable for rabid, reckless person¬ 
alities, and vulgar, vapid harangues, as intolerable as they are 
interminable. 


Laissons a 1’Italic 

De tous ces faux brillans l’eclatante folie. 

Boileau. 

“Yesterday Count Cavour administered a severe, but not alto¬ 
gether undeserved, rebuke to the Chamber. He charged the 
deputies with having done nothing, or little more than nothing, 
since the opening of Parliament, on the 18th of February, and 
expressed his apprehension that they would go on equally wasting 
their time to the close of the Session. The reproach is by no means 
new. The press, both national and foreign, has not spared what 
Garibaldi calls the ‘ Hon. Chamberand there was even a rash 
member, as far back as a month ago, who reminded his colleagues 
that, although Parliament came from ‘ parlarej the nation expected 
something more than mere 1 talk ’ from its representatives.” 

“ The ominous views taken by the opponents of the Minister of 
the present state and prospect of the finances were shared by the 
majority of the Chamber, and if M. Minghetti really thinks that 
700,000,000f. are a medicine to cure all the evils of the Italian 
Treasury, he is almost alone in his belief.” 

“Musolino, who was very minute no less than eloquent in his 
statement of facts, endeavoured to prove to the Minister that all his 
calculations were erroneous, and that, far from restoring the finances 
in four years, he would see national bankruptcy staring him full in 
the face, sure to overtake him before the first half-year of 1865.” 

“No administrative reform, they contend, will in four years do 
away with the swarm of officials who are now eating Italy out of 
house and home.” 

“ In the House of Deputies yesterday the condition of Sicily was 
made the theme of an interpellation, in which the deputies La Porta, 
Bicciardi, and Crispi described the island as a prey to the most 
intolerable evils. Public security was everywhere at an end; 5,000 
or 6,000 runaway conscripts had taken to the woods, and had made 
common cause with runaway felons. The province of Girgenti alone 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


311 


numbered no less than 600 renitenti alia leva , and hundreds of 
prisoners bad broken loose from gaol.” 

“In to-day’s sitting of the Chamber of Deputies the Neapolitan 
members, the Duke di Proto and Signor Maddaloni, laid on the 
table of the House a petition demanding a Parliamentary inquiry 
into the state of things in Naples. This petition was worded in 
extremely violent terms against Sardinia. The Chamber decided 
that it should be read in public sitting. Great sensation has been 
created by this incident.” 

“On Sunday the disturbance was raised by Spaventa, the late 
Police Director and Home Minister at Naples, who, while he under¬ 
took the apology of his own policy, ventured on such aggravating 
denunciations against his opponents on the Left, that these, in their 
turn, assailed him with personal insults too gross and too atrocious 
to be recorded.” 

“The chief subject of his complaints lay in the great number of 
Poyal decrees, by which Government almost set at naught the 
authority of Parliament, and disposed of the public money to the 
utmost exhaustion of the finances. He enumerated sixty-five of 
these arbitrary and, in his opinion, more or less illegal acts of the 
Executive, and said that all the Ministers, with the single exception 
of the Minister of Grace and Justice, were more or less liable to 
this charge of unconstitutionality.” 

“I confess that, as far as I can make out, the parties are so 
evenly balanced that a feather’s weight would be enough to sink the 
scale.” 

“ There is here just now a perfect Babel of parties; there would 
be little harm in people not understanding one another, if only there 
were any who thoroughly understood themselves. There is such a 
stir, such a commotion among public men under the Turin porticoes 
I never remember to have witnessed, even when the destinies of the 
country hung on the cast of a die on the battlefields of Solferino or 
Castelfidardo. The noise is not great, indeed, for people converse 
in ominous whispers; but the animation of these Southern coun¬ 
tenances is very striking.” 

< ‘ Picciardi was followed by Miceli, a Calabrian, and a deputy of 
the Left, who confirmed the charges brought against Eumel, and 
asserted that no less than 300 persons had been shot without trial in 
the province of Cosenza only, though that province, he said, was 


312 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


never a prey to brigandage, but was only infested by petty thieves 
( ladruncoli ).” 

“All the efforts of Tuscan, iEmilian, and Neapolitan statesmen 
towards the nationalisation of the Administration founder against 
the rock-like tenacity of Piedmontese officials. They are in posses¬ 
sion ; they are, undoubtedly, the ablest and most honest; the intro¬ 
duction of new elements, it must needs be avowed, is fraught with 
danger; yet the monopoly is hateful, and the outcry against it is 
incessant; it is natural, it is just.” 

“ The representatives of the Italian nation meet by no means in 
very good spirits. Every man has a tale to tell of the universal 
disorder prevailing in his own particular district in every branch of 
the Administration, and of the loud and deep general discontent to 
which it gives rise.” 

“The very attendance, at the sittings becomes an unendurable 
bore, and no man could sit them out were it not for certain occasional 
outbursts of feeling, a certain genuine play of passions, to which no 
real investigator of the strong and weak sides of human nature can 
be quite indifferent.” 

“This declaration took everybody aback, and spread confusion 
and dismay among the members of the ill-assorted Graribaldi- 
Patazzi alliance. Patazzi himself, his enemies aver, betook him¬ 
self to the expedient of fainting away, and had himself carried off 
precisely as the votes were called; Capriolo, indignant, passed over 
to Cavour; Pepoli, no less provoked, stuck to his order of the day, 
voted with the minority, and wrote a furious letter to Garibaldi, 
upbraiding him with inconsistency and desertion of his friends.” 

“ Ferrari next alluded to the documents laid upon the table on 
the Poman question, and characterised them as mere literary 
performances. They were letters which never reached their desti¬ 
nation, and in all probability were never intended to do so. The 
Emperor of the French received them as a good joke. His answer 
was a mere sneer, to the effect that the Pope ‘was not in the 
humour’ to listen to such proposals.” 

“DonLiborio has borrowed his eloquence from some thumping 
and pounding Capuchin monk, and his range of thought, his train of 
reason and 'political views, are not greatly above the standard of the most 
grovelling monastic idotcy. Yet such is the man who had cunning 
enough to turn his clothes thrice in the year , who was returned to 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


313 


Parliament by nine different Southern constituencies, and whose 
name sounded loudest out of Neapolitan throats after Garibaldi’s.” 

“ The Government thought they could best weather the storm if 
they gained a week’s time, and put off the evil day from one Monday 
to another.” 

“ A motion was then made to close the discussion, but there seems 
to be still a number of orators who think it due to their country, to 
their anxiety to be on good terms with their electors, or to their 
fondness of hearing their own voices, to entertain the Chamber with 
more speeches, so, after a long debate, it was settled that the 
discussion should go on. It seems to be the intention of the 
Ministerial majority and of the old members of the North and 
Central parts of the country to allow their Southern brethren their 
full swing, to see if it be possible to wear their lungs out, and to 
force from them an avowal that no efforts have been made to ‘ stifle 
the discussion,’ no opportunity or time denied to them of fully 
stating their interminable grievances.” 

“ With this disposition of mind and with this balance of forces are 
the different parties in the Italian Parliament preparing for their 
next encounter; and it is no matter of wonder if the real lovers of 
the country look to the sitting of Monday with something like 
uneasiness and misgiving. We should, however, bear in mind that 
this same Parliament had as bad and even worse storms to weather 
in more than one instance, when the instinctive sense of the country 
steered clear of the rocks and breakers against which the frail bark 
of the newly-united State seemed so likely to split.” 

‘ ‘ The slackness of the Italian lawgivers in their efforts to set their 
house in order is but a poor recommendation to the goodwill of those 
capitalists who are to trust the Kingdom of Italy with a loan of 
700,000,000f.” 

“The House of Deputies, which was, as you are aware, called 
together towards the close of January, has been so thin throughout 
this month that the legal number has only been attained in one or 
two instances.” 

“ The dreary length and dulness of many speeches, and the heroic 
forbearance with which the House puts up with the effusions of an 
abominable mediocrity, may also have contributed to weary out both 
actors and spectators.” 

“ If we look back upon what the Italian Parliament has already 


314 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

done, we cannot delay its claim to be ranked among the most useful 
as well as the most goodnatured Assemblies in the world. It 
is tolerant of dulness; it is so far superior to our own impatience 
that it can listen without wincing to written speeches very badly 
read, and it can listen to opinions from which it entirely differs 
without frantic demonstrations of impatience or repulsion.” 

“ De Blasiis, a Neapolitan and an out-and-out Government man, 
thought the true cause of Neapolitan evils was the too frequent 
succession of Dictators , Pro-Dictators , Lieutenants , Governors , and 
Prefects there. It was necessary to give that Government something 
like stability. For the rest, the Neapolitans were staunch to Italian 
unity. They had much to gain by it, as they were a backward, 
ignorant set. These ill-measured words gave rise to a great uproar 
in the House, and the sitting was otherwise disturbed by personal 
attacks and recriminations.” 

“ On the whole, therefore, the solution of the Italian difficulty has 
hardly begun.” 

“ Country people begin to inquire with anxiety what would be 
issue of a general election. Every Ministerial crisis, it is felt, is a 
step towards the ultimate triumph of the Revolutionary party. It 
is easy to fall from Ricasoli to Ratazzi; but Ratazzi is not unlikely 
to make way for Cialdini, and he again to be superseded by 
Garibaldi. Behind Garibaldi loom Mazzini and all the disorders of 
1849. It is difficult for far-seeing politicians not to feel a vital 
interest in the preservation of a Government at the head of which 
is a man of Ricasoli’s character. Yet that Government has but few 
elements of vitality, and, as we saw yesterday, he has hardly more 
mercy to hope for from his alleged friends than from his sworn 
enemies.” 

‘ 1 At the present moment there are ominous financial breakers 
ahead, and Italy has just made a somewhat ludicrous experience of 
the effect of parliamentary regulations, when not dictated or modified, 
by plain common sense, in the humbling necessity of having had to 
suspend public business during the three last days of the past week, 
in consequence of three successive 1 counts out.’” —Morning Post. 

“ Nardini contended that there was now no doubt of the hostility 
of France and the French Emperor to Italian unity, advised some 
abatement in the expressions of Italian attachment, and some cool¬ 
ness in the diplomatic relations between the two countries.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


315 


“ The debates would be as dull as a theological controversy, and 
the Chamber would sink below the mark of the dullest spouting- 
club or drowsiest discussion forum, were it not for what men here 
call ‘incidents,’ but which in England would go by the name of 
‘scenes,’ and approach, indeed, very nearly to what might be 
described as ‘ fracas .’” 

“ About that time, however, his friend the Deputy Macchi entered 
the House, fresh from Genoa, and informed his partisans that 
General Garibaldi would not be with them either on that day or 
ever afterwards, for he (Macchi) had made the General aware that 
his parliamentary campaigns had invariably turned out as dead 
failures as signal success had constantly attended his warlike ex¬ 
peditions.” 

“Musolino glanced at the events of 1820, 1831, and 1848-9; 
showed how France had stifled Italian freedom in Piedmont and 
Naples in the first year, in Fomagna in the second, in Pome in the 
last; quoted the famous declaration of Lamartine, that France was 
as ready to protect Piedmont against Austrian invasion as to oppose 
the occupation of Lombardy by Piedmont, and the formation of a 
large State in the North of the Peninsula ; he further attributed 
T nE CAMPAIGN OF 1859 TO A DESIGN ON THE PART OF NAPOLEON TO 

gain Nice and Savoy, and substitute iiis own ascendancy for 
Austrian domination in Italy. Many of the things he said strike 

EVEN THE BLINDEST PARTISANS OF THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON AS TRUE, 
AND MOST MEN WHO ARE AFRAID TO UTTER THE TRUTH THEMSELVES, 
ARE BY NO MEANS SORRY THAT ONE SHOULD BE FOUND BRAVE AND 
BLUNT ENOUGH TO GIVE IT UTTERANCE. Musolino, to do him justice, 
did not mince matters.” 

The entire Turin Cabinet would exclaim, in reference to Mazzini, 
“ Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit 
to live.” The Times has adopted the Procrustean principle in its 
estimate of Italian public men. Eeactionists do not go far enough ; 
Mazzinians go too far, and both parties must be cut short, or 
stretched out, so as to suit the Piedmontese standard of measure¬ 
ment. 

Contrast between a Piedmontese and a Mazzini an Partisan .—“ He (the 
former) is right-minded and sharp-witted inwardly, but labours 
under the great external disadvantage of an imperfect utterance, 


316 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


and reminds you of a full tliin-necked bottle turned upside down, 
whence the generous liquid bubbles and struggles forth with a vehe¬ 
mence choking and hindering its even flow. He is a sworn enemy 
to all the rules of grammar and elocution. He never fails to 
blunder wofully at every third word, and few are the sentences 
he can manage, or, indeed, seems to care to go through with.” 
“ He belongs to the Mazzinian party, as you are aware, and is 
altogether a man who does that party the greatest honour, whether 
you take into consideration his mental abilities and accomplishments, 
or his upright and generous character.” 

Widely as I differ from Mazzini, I respect his honesty, straight¬ 
forwardness, and consistency, which are admitted and admired even by 
his enemies. His character, and that of his friends, and their unquali¬ 
fied distrust and dislike of the Man of December, form a strong and 
striking contrast to the sycophany and subserviency of the Turin 
Parliament, of which it may be said, that, when they meet, “ some 
cry one thing, and some another: the assembly is confused, and 
the more part know not wherefore they are come together” (Acts 
xix. 32). It would be very unsafe for Mazzini to “adventure 
himself into that theatre ,” for “if it were noised that he was there, 
all with one voice,” with the King (if present) at their head, would 
“for about the space of two hours cry out, Great is” the saviour of 
society ! great is the benefactor of Italy!! 

“It is painful to think, say my Milanese friends, that a man 
gifted with rare intellectual faculties, and to whom no one is willing 
to impute sinister intentions—a man who, in very different times, 
has done important service to his country by keeping up the spirits 
of the Italian youths when all, or most of the patriots of the old 
school seemed to despair—the Mazzini should not see how, in all his 
endeavours, he is playing into the hands of the reactionary party, and 
doing the work of the foreign enemies of Italy.” 

“At the sitting of the Chamber of Deputies to-day, Dr. Bertani 
refuted the assertions relative to the dissolution of the Democratic 
Society at Genoa, and entered into an explanation concerning the 
Garibaldian expedition to Sicily, and his late attempt to invade the 
Roman territory. General Bixio advised the interruption of the rela¬ 
tions with France , who, while occupying Home , does not prevent the organi¬ 
sation af brigandage.” 




OmfiT FRAHCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES? 


317 


u Our Consul-General at Naples was contradicted, not only by our 
own Board of Trade, but also by the secretary of our Legation at 
Turin. That gentleman informed Her Majesty’s Government that 
there was a steady decline in most branches of British commerce 
with Italy, and that that decline was owing, as might naturally be 
expected, to this fact, that the taxes of Piedmont ivere so heavy, her 
Customs ’ duties so cumbrous, for the purposo of beeping up a large 
army, as to discourage trade. As an illustration of this, Mr. West 
stated that the occupation of Southern Italy by Piedmontese troops 
was so expensive that, to use his own words, “it will swallow up 
the total revenues from all the rest of the annexed provinces put 
together.” 

“ Prance was at Pome in spite of herself, in presence of three 
serious contradictions—-viz., against the principles of 1789, the 
system of non-intervention, and the accomplishment of that united 
Italy which she had assisted to create. He expressed his confidence in 
the Emperor, ivho understood the spirit of the time ”/! (Sardinian 
Minister )— Times. 

Past extravagance, present embarrassments, and impending bank¬ 
ruptcy, seem to characterise the position and prospects of Pied¬ 
montese finance:—• 

Pour sauver son credit, il faut caches sa perte; 

Celle que, par, malheur, nos glus avaient souffcrte, 

Ne fut se reparer; le cas fut decouvert— 

Les voila sans credit, sans argent, sans ressource, 

Prets a porter le bonnet vert, 

Aucun ne leur ouvrit sa bourse. 

La Fontaine. 

u During the last two or three days there has been great agitation 
on the Bourse, caused by the financial changes which have been 
introduced with the beginning of the year. The Bentes have fallen 
to 63 ’ 40 , and many who purchased Neapolitan Scrip at 72 are in a 
state of desperation.” 

“ ‘ The finances of Italy,’ he said, * are in a discouraging condition, 
and this should hardly be the case, considering that the finances of 
the single states were rather flourishing at the time of their respec¬ 
tive annexation. Even Piedmont, though political events had com¬ 
pelled it to run into debt, always kept up a fair balance between its 


318 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


ordinary revenue and its expenditure. Tlie immense deficit in tli© 
Italian finances lie was inclined to ascribe to some vice in tlie Adminis* 
tration.”— Speech in Italian Parliament. 

“The Nationalites of to-day announces that the financial report 
which Signor Bastogi, Minister of Finance, is about to present to 
the Chamber of Deputies will show a difference in the expenditure 
of 200,000,000f. compared with the ordinary Budget.” 

“ The present year will cause a new excess of the expenditure over 
the revenue of at least 100,000,000f. The movement to which Italy 
owes her independence and unity has already cost her one milliard 
(1,000,000,OOOf.); it will cost her 100,000,000f. more before 1863 is 
over.” 

• “The general deficit of the kingdom, according to the Minister of 
the Finances, who is not yet ready with his Budget, is 314,000,OOOf.” 

“The Government is taken to task for its incapacity in the 
management of the finances. The loan of the 500,000,OOOf. was 
contracted by a banker (the Minister Bastogi), it is said, and with 
no other view than that of favouring the bankers. A preference 
was given to the money exchangers over the private citizens. The 
bankers, native and foreign, took shares in an infinitely larger 
quantity than they could afford, with a view to speculate upon them. 
The consequence is that, upon the first panic, they have shown too 
eager an anxiety to undersell each other. The rents have fallen, 
and the shares will have to be sold off, with great risk of seeing 
them sink from 69 to 60, and perhaps 50 before the year is over, 
when no man knows on what terms the unavoidable new loan may 
be contracted. Meanwhile, little or nothing has been done towards 
an equitable distribution of taxes; The old provinces pay a great 
deal too much, while the new provinces are comparatively free from 
public burdens.” 

“ Count Bastogi, the Minister of Finance, has suffered a defeat in 
the House of Deputies,—a slight blow, however, which will break 
no bones, and will hardly effect the well-earned popularity of this 
extremely active and intelligent administrator. His Bill for putting 
a tax on the new patents of nobility has been almost unanimously 
rejected in the Offices, and is not likely to come on for discussion in 
the Chamber. It was an odd freak of fancy on the Minister’s part. 
Himself a clever and successful banker at Leghorn, he has just been 
raised by the King to the ranh of County as you are aware, in remunera - 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONARAUTES ? 319 

tion of his exertions in contracting the 500,000,000f. loan in the early 
part of this Session.” 

“A long time may probably elapse before the Italian kingdom 
secures complete diplomatic recognition.” 

“A Bill for the temporary occupation of the convents by the 
military was brought forward to-day in the Senate. Urgency was 
demanded for the passing of the Bill, as it will shortly be necessary 
to provide lodging for 93,000 recruits.” 

“ The consequence of this Southern war is that Italy has been 
obliged to maintain an army far beyond her wants in time of peace. It 
would be dangerous to leave the banks of the Mincio unwatched, 
and, as the army which should watch them is dispersed through the 
Two Sicilies, another must be kept there for the purpose. This 
burdens the new kingdom with the cost of almost crushing arma¬ 
ments. It is no secret that the finances of the country are in a very 
bad state, and that economy must be speedy and general if Italy is 
to be saved from disaster.” 

“ Of all this immense mass of work, the Chamber will, no doubt, 
achieve rather nothing than little. The Government must for some 
time be conducted on discretionary principles. This is the third year 
since Parliament was called upon to vote a Budget. Instead of 
a financial statement, Bastogi presents a Bill for a loan of 
500,000,000f., to be contracted upon terms likely to bring upon 
the country liabilities to the amount of 700,000,000f. Yet the Bill 
must pass, and the money must be found on the Government’s own 
terms—the only possible terms.” 

‘ ‘ Italy needed something to remind her of the burdens of war, the 
difficulty of wresting territory from a well-armed State, despotic 
though it be, and to convince her that internal order must precede 
an attempt to complete the new map of Italy. In this respect it 
may be said, the difficulties of the present hour will not be without 
their benefit.” 

The spirit of a “Job’s comforter ” seems to breathe in this con¬ 
solatory suggestion from Printing House Square :— 

“Sicily will have severer tests put upon her patience than her regret 
at the loss of this last phantom of local independence. In order that 
her condition may be brought on a par with that of the sister provinces, 
with which she so long sighed for and courted a union, she must pay 


320 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


her own share in men and money; she must accept the law of 
military and naval conscription; she must take her own share of the 
taxes , allowing even the establishment of the Government monopoly 
in salt and tobacco—all evils from which the privileged island was 
exempt under the rule of those Bourbons whom, in spite of all these 
advantages, she so cordially detested. Sicily, however, was lately 
rid by Garibaldi of her one tax of the Macinato , or duty on mill 
grist, which yielded I7,000,000f. to the public treasury. For this 
temporary relief she ought to be truly thankful, and all the readier to 
make up for the deficit created in the public revenues , by bearing those 
burdens , which other provinces submit to without murmur. Some 
discontent, and even occasional disorder, we hear of, nevertheless.”— 
Times. 

IV.—Eicasoli and Eatazzi. 

The Piedmontese ministers are objects of compassion rather than 
of envy. They must undertake a task, which the highest authority 
has declared to be impossible, that of serving two masters; from 
the one of whom they receive orders at Turin, whilst the other issues 
his commands from Paris both to him and to them. The palpable 
enthralment of Victor Emmanuel to the Man of December is far 
more irksome and ignominious than the alleged dependence of tho 
exiled princes upon Austria. In the latter case both parties had a 
common interest, and were descended from a common ancestor. 
In the former there is no feeling of reciprocal confidence or 
cordiality. The cession of Nice and Savoy, and the unexpected 
exaction of a large sum of money, manifested, on the part of the 
French ruler, amidst all his professions of disinterested friendship, 
a most ignoble and insatiable selfishness. We may imagine that, 
after the peace of Villafranca, a dialogue of the following tenor 
took place ( Holiere , Medecin malgri lui): — 

L. N.—Je vous donne le bonjour. 

Y. E.—Attendez un peu, s’il vous plait. 

L. N —Que voulez vous faire ? 

Y. E.—Yous donner de l’argent, et du territoire, Monsieur. 

E- N.—( Tendant sa main par derriere , tandis que Y. E. onvre sa bourse , et produit 
des cartes.) Je n’en prendrai pas, Monsieur. 

Y. E.—Monsieur? 

L. N.—Point du tout. 


\ 


OUGHT FRANCE TO 'WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 321 

V. E.—Un petit moment. 

L. N.—En aucune fa?on. 

V. E.—De grace. 

L. N.—Yons vous moquez. 

Y. E.—Yoila qui est fait. 

L. N.—Je n’en ferai rien. 

V. E.-He! 

E. "N”.—Ce n’est pas l’argent qui me fait agir. 

V. E.—Je le crois. 

E. N.—( Apres avoir pris Vargent et les doewnens.) Ccla est il de poids? Les 
frontieres sont elles arrangees selon mon bon plaisir ? 

V. E.—Oui, Monsieur. 

E. N.—Je ne suis pas un allie mercenaire. 

V. E—Je le sais bien. 

E. N.—L’interet de me gouverne point. 

Y. E.—Je n’ai pas cette pensee. 

E. N.— Seal regardant Vargent et les cartes.) Ma foi, cela ne va pas mal. 

Any indication of an honest and independent spirit, on the part 
of a Piedmontese statesman, is odious to the Man of December. 
The speech which the Sardinian Premier delivered on his accession 
to office must have been gall and wormwood when perused at 
Conrpiegne, although France is alluded to in friendly terms; and, 
in fact, the mercenary malaria of the political atmosphere at Turin, 
is injurious, if not fatal, to ministerial independence and integrity :— 

“I have heard speak of a cession of territory, but permit me, 
gentlemen, to repel with profound disdain the idea of such a thing. 
The King’s Government does not know an inch of Italian ground 
which can be ceded; it will not cede one—no, absolutely no! 
The King’s Government sees a national territory to defend and 
to recover. It sees Pome—it sees Venice [it ought rather to see 
Nice and Savoy]. And towards that Eternal city and that 
Queen of the Adriatic, it directs all the wishes, the hopes, and the 
projects of the nation. The Government understands the gravo 
task which devolves on it, and is resolved, with the grace of God, to 
accomplish that task. An eventuality which is being prepared, and 
which will come in due time, will open the road towards Venice. In 
the meantime, let us think of Pome! Yes, we will go to Pome! 
Pome, politically separated from the rest of Italy, would remain a 
centre of intrigues and conspiracies—a permanent menace to public 
order. Therefore, to go to Romo is for the Italians not only a right , 

x 


322 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 

but an inexorable necessity. But how can we go there ? The King’s 
Government on this point, more than on any other, will be frank 
and precise. We will not go to Eome by insurrectional, untimely, 
rash, and insensate means, which might place in peril what has been 
acquired, and compromise the national enterprise. We ivill go to 
Rome in concert with France. You declared that yourselves, in the 
memorable sitting of the 27th of March, and the Government cannot 
separate itself from the decision of Parliament. -We will go to 
Pome, not to destroy, but to construct—to offer to the Church the 
means of reforming itself—to give it the liberty and independence 
which will stimulate it to seek regeneration in the purity of religious 
sentiment, in the simplicity of manners, in the severity of discipline, 
in all the virtues which, to the great honour and immortal glory of 
the Pontificate, rendered its first centuries distinguished and vene¬ 
rated—to regenerate itself, in a word, by the frank and honest 
abandonment of that power, which is contrary to the great object of 
its institution, which object is entirely spiritual.” 

‘ ‘ If arms are always the force and necessity of nations, they are 
particularly so at the present supreme moment—they are, in fact, 
for Italy, a condition of life or death. We arm not only for the 
defence of the national territory as it is now constituted ’, but also to com¬ 
plete it, and to give it its natural and legitimate limits. On this point, 
gentlemen, the policy of the Government is nothing else than the 
right of the nation. The Government knows no other limit—it will 
not stop at any other confines than those which right itself has 
marked out. It is for the double object of gaining back and defend¬ 
ing the national territory that all naval and military preparations 
are being made, and this is proved by the Bills which you have 
already voted, and by those which are now before you. It belongs 
to you, gentlemen, to supply the Government with the means of 
persevering in that path. A nation, generous and strong, is never 
without friends, and the truth of that declaration is shown every day 
by the state of our foreign relations. With the exception of Austria, 
the Government is happy to announce that its relations with the 
principal Powers of Europe are friendly and satisfactory. The 
Italian cause excites general sympathy, and may count on again 
having allies.” 

“ The speech of Baron Eicasoli will, no doubt, give rise to many 
unfriendly remarks. His opponents will say that he carries courage 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONArARTES ? 323 

to foolhardiness, and outdoes Count Cavour in energy of language, 
because he does not see the difficulties which compelled that states¬ 
man to moderation. Some even of his friends will regret that he 
should have chosen the moment when France recognised the new 
kingdom to announce the certainty of war in Yenetia, and of revo¬ 
lutionary intrigues in Borne. But this is not the light in which his 
conduct appears to us. We are rather inclined to form a high 
estimate of his political talents from his having thus startled the 
world at the outset of his career.”— Times. 

“ In his despatch to the Italian plenipotentiary at the Court of 
the Tuileries, Baron Bicasoli, in the plainest terms, claims Borne as 
the capital of Italy on geographical and political grounds. He says 
that its position points out Borne to be the future, as it was the past, 
chief city of Italy; that Italian sentiment would not permit Italian 
unity to be broken in the middle by a heterogeneous State, and that 
much less can it suffer such ‘ dissolution of continuity’ to be occa¬ 
sioned by a State which, as the success of Francis II.’s intrigues has 
proved, is rancorously hostile.”— II. 

“ France has too long averted her eyes from the crimes which her 
occupation of Borne has alone rendered possible. She will not now 
forfeit all title to the gratitude of Italy by making herself accessory 
to them after the fact.”— Liberal Paper. 

“When the French Emperor intimates that ‘so far he will go, 
and no farther,’ it is quite natural that Ricasoli should bow his head to 
the ground , and hold his peace. Any resolution Napoleon III. may 
come to may be, or may not be, binding on himself, but the Italian 
Government enters into no compact about it. The boon is accepted 
by them with no conditions, and, indeed, it is made with none. 
France has allowed Italy to help herself to the heritage of the 
Pontiffs by instalments, by the seizure first of the Legations, then of 
the Marches and Umbria, always with the understanding that the 
tide of invasion had now reached the god Terminus, beyond which 
it could not proceed. The landmarks are now to be once more 
forced back, removed almost to the walls of a city whose life, when 
wrenched from the lands under its immediate dependence, would 
merely be long inanition and agony.”— lb. 

“ The man lacks the facile and winning manners of his genial 
predecessor, and he suffers the cares which weigh heavily and prey 
on his mind to show forth in his pale, and apparently fagged and 

x 2 


324 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


anxious countenance. The men to whom advances have been made 
to place them at the head of the Home Office—Pallieri, Lanza, San 
Martino, Spaventa, Cassinis, and ever so many others—hang bach 
in dismay. Had even any of those designated by public rumour 
accepted the proffered honour, the Cabinet would not by any means 
have gained fresh strength .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ Baron Ricasoli said that the advice given to the Government 
during this debate had already been adopted. He refuted the 
arguments of several members, who maintained that the only enemy 
of Italy was France, and declared that he could easily prove the 
contrary.” 

“ Baron Ricasoli stated in the senate that the relations between 
Italy and France continued to be of the most cordial nature.” 

“ There seems to be a deep-laid plot to remove Ricasoli altogether, 
and his ruin is compassed by a coterie obeying French influence, and 
combining with a strong party at Court, aided by a large number of 
Piedmontese bureaucrats of the old school. Baron Ricasoli has com¬ 
mitted great mistakes. He has too strongly relied on some of his Tuscan 
friends, and thereby given offence to a narrow-minded and testy, but 
• compact and active knot of Piedmontese officials. He has been rather 
too stiff and stern with the good, but somewhat facile and indulgent 
King, and has so mismanaged the Home Office as to raise a general 
outcry in the country against his ‘ no government.’ Whether it may 
be justly attributed to him or not, there is no denying that the in¬ 
ternal Administration has fallen into such utter disorder, that hardly 
any man in Italy can now take it in hand with any well-grounded 
hope of success. Upon his inability either to conduct public business, 
or to find a man able to do it for him, rest the hopes Ricasoli’s 
opponents entertain of ousting him.” 

“ Baron Ricasoli the other day visited the King, whom he had 
not seen since his retirement from office. His Majesty received his 
former Minister with much warmth, and indeed rather scolded him 
for his habitual coldness and reserve, and then proceeded to talk of 
politics, and to consult the Baron upon the political men and events 
of to-day. Ricasoli expressed, I have heard, rather a cold approval 
of the attitude of the present Italian Cabinet, and was monosyllabic 
in his replies. One advice, it is said, ho strongly impressed upon 
the King—not to believe too fully in the policy which is now out¬ 
ward, and which is put forward by certain Cabinets only to amuse 


t 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 325 

the public. Bicasoli dined with the king, and the ice between them 
is undoubtedly broken; but a political reconciliation is not yet accom¬ 
plished.’ ' 

“No one can say of what use to them may be the vote of a 
majority whose support had not yielded the practical aid of one 
practical man, out of whose ranks not one candidate has stepped 
forward for that Home Office for which all the present Ministers had 
most avowedly declared themselves incompetent.” 

“Baron Bicasoli plainly stated that he had done all in his power 
to complete his Ministry, both by offering the portfolio of the 
Interior to several distinguished statesmen, and by attempting some 
modifications in the existing Cabinet, so as to entrust the Home 
Office to men better qualified than he was for that extremely arduous 
task. He had met with refusals everywhere, and was therefore 
driven to the alternative, either to re-appear before Parliament at 
the head of his present colleagues, or of resigning with them the 
trust that the King and country had put upon them.”— Times. 

11 Every portfolio, it is said, is turned into a mere manufacture of 
placemen. Employes are multiplied to infinity, both in the central 
and the provincial Administration, and, what is worse, the greater the 
number of functionaries, the greater the confusion, and more despe¬ 
rate the disorder. Salaries and pensions crush the State, but it 
would seem as if no work were done. You meet hardly any men 
about but officials away from their office ; and even members of the 
magistracy and holders of professorships seem to enjoy the happiest 
sinecures. ’ ’— lb. 

“We certainly should have thought that, in a country circum¬ 
stanced as Italy unhappily is, surrounded by insidious friends and 
open enemies, with the whole work of re-casting and re-organising 
the institutions of twenty-four millions of men still to do—with the 
great problem of conciliating central government with local adminis¬ 
tration yet unsolved, and imperiously demanding a solution—with 
crime and outrage still rife in the South—with Venice in the 
clutches of Austria, and Pome in the talons of Prance—with clerical 
revolution spreading wider and wider every day—with the fate of 
the oldest Sovereign in Europe trembling in the balance—we should 
have thought, wo say, that the Prime Minister of Victor Emmanuel 
had enough on his hands, without embarking in speculative and re¬ 
mote improvements. This, however, is not so.”— lb. 


o26 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

‘ ‘ The Prime Minister clioso tire blind to lead the blind. Ills 
Tuscan friends were as helpless strangers in Turin as he was him¬ 
self, and the hostility of the bureaucrats, which might have spared 
him, would give no quarter to his minions.” 

‘“I see nowhere arms or concord; everywhere slowness, incapacity, 
and, at the utmost, supineness and patience.’ He proceeded to give 
a most gloomy picture of the state of the country, consequent on a 
sluggish, improvident Administration. Everywhere he saw the 
hidden partisans of the old system, the servants of Antonelli and the 
Bourbons, the* very friends of Austria, caressed and promoted, and, 
on the contrary, the real, earnest patriots, put down and repulsed.” 

“ Placed in a position which requires all the talent of the country 
to support it, he has sought, and sought in vain, to strengthen his 
Ministry by mon in whose names the country would feel peculiar 
confidence. Patazzi, Lanza, Cialdini, all hold aloof, and leave the 
Minister with associates who might have discharged their duties 
sufficiently well under the guidance of Cavour, but who fail alto¬ 
gether to supply the support required by his less powerful and less 
popular successor. The members of the majority have held a few 
meetings, but nothing has been achieved beyond the choice of a new 
leader—Lanza—instead of the somewhat sleepy and somewhat worn- 
out Buoncompagni. The Grovernment party is utterly disorganised, 
not to say demoralised, and there is hardly a member aware of the 
part he or his neighbours are likely to take in the approaching 
dobate. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Left is no less helpless 
and anarchic, though it has very lately ranged itself under the 
leadership of the veteran Brofferio.” 

“Italy seems to find no men willing to govern her. A Ministerial 
portfolio, with the 25,000f. salary attached to it—a very splendid 
appointment in this country—must go a-begging from man to man 
for three months, without any chance of tempting the ambition or 
cupidity even of the most aspiring and grasping.” 

“ There are not, perhaps, three members in the whole Parliament 
who are fully satisfied with the present Administration. On the 
contrary, the state of public security, which is daily getting worse, 
not only in the old lawless districts of Eomagna, but even in Lom¬ 
bardy, Tuscany, and in Piedmont itself, evidently demands that a 
stronger and abler hand than that of the present Prime Minister 
should lay hold of the helm of the State.” 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 327 

“ Signor Ratazzi, in responding to tlie toasts, said—‘ I thank you 
for the words and wishes you have expressed in favour of Italy, and 
in so doing, my first thought is directed towards the Emperor 
Napoleon, the illustrious chief of your generous nation.’ Signor 
Ratazzi also expressed his thanks for the feelings of affection which France 
entertained towards Italy, feelings which , he said , find in return the most 
ardent devotedness on the part of the Italians. ‘Italy,’ continued Signor 
Ratazzi, ‘ will never forget what she owes to your august Emperor, 
who, for her sake, has braved so many dangers, and who alone held 
out a hand to her in the worst moment of her distress.’ ” 

“ Rome is naturally, and will soon really be, the capital of Italy. 
I am convinced the French Government desires that the occupation 
of Rome may cease. It is the interest of France to have a strong 
Italy as an ally. The French Government is our sincere friend. It 
recognised us after we had proclaimed Rome as the capital of Italy. 
Our adversaries are their adversaries.” 

“ Ricasoli is looked upon rather as an Imperial delegate than as 
the legitimate head of a national Administration.”— Examiner. 

“Ratazzi has acquired a reputation for trickery, cunning, and 
subserviency, as well as for versatile ability.”— Saturday Revieio. 

“The great fuss that is made about this imaginary journey of 
M. Ratazzi is only intended to throw dust into the people’s eyes, 
and amuse them with false expectations, as was done at the time of 
the projected trial of Garibaldi, a trial which was never seriously 
intended to come off, and with which, however, the Government 
contrived to busy public opinion for more than five weeks. The 
English public may best judge if it is by such tricks that a free 
nation may be governed.”— Times. 

“ The Garibaldian Mordini loudly taunted the Government with 
the ‘ universal disapprobation of Italy;’ interpreting it of course as 
disapprobation of the Ratazzi Ministry, which, however, is in Italian 
eyes equivalent to the whole system of Piedmontese domination. 
He pointed to ‘ Lombardy, where the Ministry has not succeeded in 
gaining a single friend—to Tuscany, the key of the Italian edifice, 
which cannot now refrain from the open expression of its indignation 
and grief.’ If these representations can be made of the regions 
which seemed most readily to suffer annexation, and made by the 
strong supporters of Cavour’s policy, what may we not expect to 
hear from proscribed Royalists, and in that Naples which is still 


328 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE J30NATARTES ? 


writhing from the atrocities of the state of siege ?” — Saturday 
Review. 

“ The amnesty, it is now too evident, was resolved upon from the 
beginning. Ratazzi was only perplexing his colleagues, his 
official organs, the King, the public, and the very persons whose 
advice he solicited. He only wished to seem reluctant to the 
amnesty—to appear as if ho granted it on compulsion.”— Times. 

‘ ‘ Like other dogs, Ratazzi has had his day ; he has fallen before 
the odium which must attach to any Italian tainted with the sus¬ 
picion of being under the influence of Napoleon III.”— lb. 

“Tried by this test, we see that the popular taste all over Italy 
has imperiously demanded that Signor Ratazzi should be repre¬ 
sented as the enemy of popular freedom, as the obstacle to national 
independence, as the instrument of a foreign Government, as the 
Minister by whose acts his own Government and nation have been 
constantly and systematically degraded in the eyes of Europe.”— lb. 

“Of the bitterness of the public feeling against Ratazzi and his 
colleagues, it is impossible for me to give an adequate idea, except 
by stating that this implacable hostility is now especially most 
evident in Turin, where the Cabinet had, on its accession, its 
strongest support (as it was looked upon as the natural guardian of 
the municipal interests of the falling capital), and where now you 
have only to question the meanest shopkeeper, and you hear one 
unanimous outcry against a Ministry by which the Piedmontese 
cnaracter for probity and fair dealing has been dragged into the 
dust.”— lb. 

“ M. Ratazzi is doomed to fall; he is falling, but he seems bent 
on meeting Sampson’s fate ; he strives to involve his enemies in his 
ruin; he tugs hard at the pillars of the social edifice, and is -not 
unlikely to bring down both Government and Parliament about his 
ears. The English public will be amazed to hear that eight days’ 
discussion has not brought the House any nearer to a division than 
it was at the outset; but the wonder will, perhaps, cease when I add 
that after an eight days’ debate the Ministers have not yet half 
completed their defence, although there was twice a loud call for 
them to stand up and speak.”— lb. 

“The most furious among the members of Parliament who are 
pouring in upon Turin from all parts of the country are the repre¬ 
sentatives of the Neapolitan provinces. Their ill-will against 


I 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 329 

Batazzi is raised to wliat may seem a pitch of stark madness, and 
it may bo said that by this they only too faithfully interpret the 
frame of mind of their constituents, inasmuch as one of them, being 
asked whether he would, as heretofore, vote with the Ministers, 
answered that ‘ were he to do so he was sure to be massacred by his 
townsmen the moment he ventured to go back to them.’ The 
grievances of the Neapolitans against this and all former, against 
all possible, Governments are manifold. They complain of mis- 
government, and no doubt with good reason.”— Times. 

“The best friends of M. Batazzi never denied that he came into 
office by strongly obj ectionable contrivances; and that he strove to 
retain power by those arts which had won it. He surrounded the 
King, at Naples, at the time of his late visit there, with men who, 
to say the least, might with greater wisdom have been held in the 
background.” 

“Now the Attorney-General of the Milanese Court came to Batazzi 
yesterday to inform the Minister that the Court was on the point of 
declaring its own incompetency. The farce has thus been played 
out to the last scene, and the decree of amnesty may be looked 
forward to as inevitable. But the amnesty is granted too late, and 
with a very ill grace.” 

“Baron Bicasoli, who is expected in Turin this day, is also sure 
to be present in the House, and will take his former seat in the 
midst of his former supporters. He is imlikely, however, to take 
any active part in the struggle, nor will he again, it is said, accept 
office, even were it offered to him, as he thinks the personal dislike 
of the King to him is unconquerable, and, at any rate, the parting 
between the head of the State and his chief adviser was not of a 
nature to admit of a speedy reconciliation.”— Times. 

“We are quiet, and here, of course, public tranquillity will not 
be interrupted. La Marmora will take care of that, but when this 
season of silence has passed away there will be such an outpouring 
of wrath against Batazzi and Co. as has never been heard before. 
The indignation which is felt against him. is deep and universal: 
first, because he is regarded as the Minister of the Emperor; and 
secondly, because he is believed, in combination with his foreign 
master, to have led on and betrayed the simple-minded, honest, and 
really great man who is now suffering the inevitable consequences 
of weakness.”— lb. 


330 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE 13 ON A PARTES ? 


“The friends of Baron Bicasoli remain, like him, grateful to 
France for the sacrifices which she has made for Italy (? ?) [He 
says nothing of the sacrifices exacted from Italy.] They feel 
that they cannot march forward without her, much less in spite of 
her.” 

The Parliament and Cabinet of Turin seem to be a focus for 
intrigue, jealousy, caballing, cajolery, and mutual alienation and 
animosity. The “statesmen” are so confident of their own fitness 
for the highest positions, that their pride often prevents them from 
accepting the subordinate offices. 

Had the fell passions of their hearts hurst forth, 

I fear we should have seen decipher’d there 
More ranc’rous spite, more furious raging broils, 

Than yet can he imagin’d or suppos'd. 

But howsoe’er, no simple man that sees 
This jarring discord of nobility, 

This should’ring of each other in the court. 

This factious bandying of their favourites, 

But that he doth presage some dire event. 

Shakspeare. 

Y. —Garibaldi. 

In no case has the truth of the laudatur ab his, culpatur ab illis 
maxim been more strikingly exemplified, that in that of this w r orld- 
celebrated man. An Irish Poman Catholic prelate pourtrayed 
him in the following terms: “ The unhappy man who was saluted 
by infatuated crowds as a redeemer, who was hailed as the first 
of heroes, and almost placed upon the altars of Protestant England, 
because he swore eternal enmity to Catholic clergy and proclaimed 
the Pope to be Antichrist—this unhappy man, ignominiously 
defeated by a handful of soldiers, wounded, and taken prisoner 
at Aspromonte, has lost all his prestige, and become an object of 
contempt , even to those who puffed him up with their praises, and 
he has retired into obscurity—there, it is to be hoped, to weep 
over his follies and transgressions, and to bemoan the many 
calamities inflicted on his country.” 

If the stern philippic of the Irish prelate had been utterod by a 
member of the Sacred College, his Eminence would, in many 
quarters, have been met by the reply— 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


331 


The heads of all thy brother Cardinals, 

With thee and all thy best parts put together, 

Weigh’d not a hair of his. Plague of your policy. 

Shaksreare. 

On tlie other hand, a respectable French authority (as well as 
many English eulogists), assures us that “Garibaldi, vanquished, 
wounded prisoner, continues—how resist the evidence?—the most 
popular man in Italy.”— Revue du Monde. 

“Garibaldi has more than saved his country—he has created it; 
and he has created it by going out of the path of all ordinary duty, 
and trampling all ordinary rules under foot. There is no difference 
in principle between his successful and his unsuccessful enterprise. 
Each is alike technically unlawful. If the latter attempt is formal 
treason against the Kingdom of Italy, the former attempt was formal 
piracy against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The object of one 
is not less noble than that of the other. To deliver Rome from Bona¬ 
parte is as good a work as to deliver Naples from Bomba. The only 
difference is, that the one, as the event proves, was possible—the 
other, as far as human eyes can see, is impossible.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“Though Garibaldi has been defeated, he is as great, if not a 
greater, power than ever, for his complete unselfishness is manifest, 
and his instincts are right beyond all reasonable doubt. ‘ The 
Emperor is the persevering enemy of Italian unity ; ’ that is 
the point from which he starts; the means which he chose to thwart 
the Imperial intrigues were ill-judged and inadequate, and he fell; 
but the purity of his intentions and the truth of his convictions will 
raise him far above his present disasters, and make him, if I mis¬ 
take not, still the centre of the affections, and the hopes of his 
countrymen. ”— Times. 

“ The new r s of the capture of Garibaldi has spread through Paris 
like wildfire. This is a solemn moment for Italy. She is now at 
the most critical point of her destiny. Armed rebellion is van¬ 
quished, but the idea, which armed that rebellion, is triumphant. 
Victor and vanquished are animated by the same irresistible impulse 
—‘ To Pome! ’ ”— La Presse. 

“ It is only just to Garibaldi to say, that to his fortunate audacity 
Italy owes her unity, and the King of Italy one-half of his kingdom.” 
—Liberal Paper. 


332 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


II primo autor son’ io, 

Tntto l’onor del gran disegno £ mio. 

Metastasio. 


In cosi rea fortuna, 

Parte e di speme il non averne alcuna.— 7b. 

i 1 Few men have achieved, and fewer still have maintained, a re¬ 
putation so brilliant as that which in this prosaic age has fallen to 
the lot of this extraordinary personage. It has been his fortune to 
succeed in enterprise after enterprise, which nothing but success 
could have redeemed from the charge of unpardonable rashness.”— 
Liberal Paper. 

The love and enthusiasm, with which he is unquestionably re¬ 
garded by millions of the Italian people, continues unabated and 
unimpaired:— 

“The force of public opinion is in a great measure paralysed by 
the general indignation which the conduct of the Ratazzi Ministry 
towards Garibaldi has excited. The national pride revolts at the 
thought that the national hero has been fooled and trifled with at the 
bidding of a foreign Power.”—Saturday Review. 

“About 100 youths, amongst whom were several Venetian 
students, awaited the hero at the town gate and cheered him. He 
addressed a few words to them, expressive op his undying hatred 
ion the Emperor Napoleon. —Liberal Paper. 

“ His life is all of a piece—consistent from beginning to end. 
The men who applauded Garibaldi in 1849, who worshipped him in 
1860, have no right to condemn him in 1862. He acted without an 
afterthought or a selfish motive. His was a great error—a sublime 
misconception. Success in his case was clearly out of the question ; 
in the purity of his motives only must he be justified.”— lb. 

“I read yesterday a letter, written to a deputy here by one of 
his kinsmen, an officer in the army, belonging to the corps under 
General Mella, and bearing the date Adorno, August 17, in which 
he says that ‘ himself and sixteen other officers of his regiment 
had thrown up their commissions rather than fight against Gari¬ 
baldi.’ ”— lb. 

“Messina has caught up the cry of Roma con Garibaldi. The 
evening concerts in the Villa Reale give the opportunity to raise it. 
Of course no other beginning is allowed but Garibaldi’s hymn, and 


t 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 333 

then comes the cry ‘ Andremo a Roma e Venezia—con chi? Con 
Garibaldi ’ shouts the crowd, and tumultuous applause follows.”— 
Liberal Paper . 

“ The last news from Palermo speaks of a demonstration which 
took place on the 9th, in consequence of some troops being sent on 
the track of Garibaldi. The shops were shut, and the populace 
went with flags to the Piazza Peale, shouting, ‘ Viva Garibaldi! ’ 
aud ‘ Roma o Morte! ’ The result was that a telegram was sent 
after the troops to make them return. There is a project of another 
demonstration against the Prefect Cugia.” 

Garibaldi was re-enacting precisely the same part, by which he 
acquired such renown at Naples - 

“ Astonished at this gathering, you ask what is up. The answer 
is, ‘ Aspettiamob ‘So and So went a fortnight ago.’ ‘ So and So 
went last week, and I am going next week, or may be in a few 
days.’ ‘But whither?’ ‘To rejoin the General.’ ‘What to do ? 
Has he called you?’ ‘We don’t know what. He has not called 
us, but we think he will do something, and we will not remain 
behind.’ ‘ Are there many who are preparing to go ? ’ Some 
hundreds are ready here, and there are more in all the towns of 
Lombardy, Milan, Brescia, Pavia, Bergamo, Como, &c., as well as 
at Genoa, Livorno, Bologna, Parma, &c.; and if Garibaldi call upon 
the people of the towns every young man will follow him.” 

Chi vuol salva la patria, 

Stringa il ferro, et mi siegua. Ecco il sentiero 
Onde avra liberta Roma e l’lmpero. 

Metastasio, “Ezio." 

Roma 

Non sta fra quelle mura. Ella e per tutto 
Dove ancor non e spento 
Di gloria e liberta l’amor natio— 

Son’ Roma i fidi miei; Roma son’ io.— lb. 

But he was hooted and hunted down by the authority of the same 
monarch who had secretly countenanced his former enterprises, 
at the very time when he was disavowing them, and who is 
universally believed to have, in the present case, been guilty of 
similar duplicity:— 


334 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ General Cugia has issued the following proclamation :—> 

“ ‘ Sicilians ! Notwithstanding the words of the King, the vote of 
the Parliament, and the forbearance of the Government, in giving 
time to the deluded people to return to their duty, the armed bands 
of Garibaldi continue to occupy an important town. The rebellion 
is thus declared, and the Government has resolved to put an end to 
this state of things, so compromising for the destinies of Italy. 
Every armed band or tumultuous meeting will be dissolved by force. 
The liberty of the press is suspended. The commanders of the troops 
of the divisions of Palermo, Messina , and Syracuse will assume both civil 
and military powersd ” 

II volgo suole 
Giudicar dagli eventi, e sempre crede, 

Colpevole colui che resta oppressio. 

Metastasio. 

“His recent acts, however unjustifiable, are scarcely more illegal 
than the glorious enterprise of 1860. The loss of his position as the 
hope of his country and the first subject of the Crown, is a sufficient 
punishment for a not ungenerous irregularity.”— Saturday Review. 

“ Patazzi had assured Garibaldi that the way to Pome lay through 
Venice. Either deceived or deceiving, the new Prime Minister had 
known how to convince the volunteer leader that an attack on 
Austria was sure of French support. Garibaldi, checked at Sarnico, 
again turned from Venice to Pome, and it is now too clear, was at 
first countenanced in Sicily by the Government, in the hope that 
the terror of revolution would ‘ force the hand ’ of the French 
Emperor with respect to the Poman question.— Liberal Taper. 

“In spite of Victor Emmanuel’s proclamation against Garibaldi, 
and Garibaldi’s disregard of it, not a few here are convinced that 
at bottom there is complete accord between them. Disavowals quite 
as earnest were not wanting when Garibaldi made his first trip to 
Sicily; there were protests, and assurances, and very strong denials 
of complicity or of approbation. Garibaldi disregarded the protests 
and disobeyed the orders both of King and Minister, and went on 
his way without heeding anybody. That the Turin Government is 
more sincere now is greatly doubted, and the Emperor of the French 
would probably bear with even worse language than Garibaldi has 
yet used if he gave him a fair pretext for taking the army away 
Pom Pome.”— Times. 




OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONABARTES ? 335 

“It is notorious that the open-hearted, straight-minded, honest 
man, Garibaldi, has been played fast and loose with by the diplo¬ 
matic tricksters and traitors. It is notorious how they have tam¬ 
pered, and paltered, and shuffled with his noble, truthful nature. 
What other dark doings remain yet to be dragged to light we don’t 
know, should the trial take place. If not heaven, at least earth, 
and a lower place will be moved, to hush up these infamies. But 
treachery and villany, like murder, must out in the end .”—Liberal 
Paper. 

“ Nothing can be so convenient as to have a man on the spot who 
is ready at any moment that he is wanted to face any danger and 
make any sacrifice. He must, therefore, be sympathised with up to 
the verge of danger. How far the Cabinet at Turin have played 
this game with Giaribaldi we cannot tell; but disclosures of corre¬ 
spondence are never quite harmless; there is always ground for un¬ 
favourable interpretation, and a trial might provoke such a dis¬ 
closure.”— Ib. 

“He had been accused of connivance with Garibaldi. He had 
come to power in spite of the majority of this House, and had, it was 
asserted, sought his support among the party of action. This was 
not true. The notion of a collusion between the Government and 
Garibaldi had no foundation. It arose from the popular recollection 
of the events of 1860 , when such a connivance really existed, 

ALTHOUGH IT WAS STOUTLY DENIED BY THE THEN GOVERNMENT. 

The similarity of circumstances induced a belief in the identity of the 
case. The Government, however, had done all in their power to 
dispel that delusion.”— Ib. 

“Everywhere, whether ill or well founded, the conviction was 
that there was an understanding between Government and Garibaldi, 
and the imbecility or infamy which led to it must be severely in¬ 
vestigated.”— Ib. 

“ If half of what some Liberal French papers say about the 
manner in which Garibaldi was entrapped is true, the Turin Govern¬ 
ment have been guilty of a breach of faith already atrocious enough. 
However, by insisting on a trial, they add baseness of the most 
despicable and criminal kind to an act of unparalleled perfidy.”— Ib. 

“It was, perhaps, not until he found himself a prisoner, that 
Garibaldi fully understood his real position towards tho Govern¬ 
ment. He had been first encouraged, then humoured, and finally 


336 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE3 ? 


tempted on by the absence of resistance, until he believed that his 
expedition was half legal, as well as wholly justifiable.”— Saturday 
Review. 

‘ ‘ The Government boast that they have it in their power to main¬ 
tain order at all events, and they certainly take very energetic 
measures to shut Garibaldi up in a circle of iron and fire.”— Liberal 
Layer. 

1 ‘ The new Minister, finding that he was not heartily approved 
either by the Chamber or by the country, thought it desirable to 
rally the so-called ‘ party of action ’ to his side by vague overtures 
to Garibaldi. The inextricable misunderstandings which have 
ensued were implicitly involved in the contrast of two opposite types 
of character and of intellect. The simple-minded hero only understood 
his solitary function of fighting for the unity and independence of Italy , 
and the cultivated and dispassionate intellect of the statesman was 
incapable of comprehending a total absence of complex motives, of 
selfishness, of reflection, and of prudence. To this moment Garibaldi 
regards the attempt to profit by his reputation as the result , not of imper¬ 
fect and ill-informed astuteness , but of wilful and criminal treachery. If 
the Minister wanted to attack any foreign enemy, Garibaldi was at 
his service; but it was intolerable that he should be summoned from 
Caprera -when Yenice and Eome were to be left peaceably in the 
hands of foreign garrisons. It is not certain whether he received 
from the King deliberate encouragement in projects which must have 
been utterly repugnant to Ratazzi’s political habits of thought.” 
—Ib. 

“ The notion that Government is ‘shamming’ all the time, and 
that Garibaldi has dived into the secret of the King’s heart deeper 
than any of those who oppose, or affect to oppose, him, still lingers 
in the minds of the benighted multitude, so that there are men who 
look forward to portentous events, and excitement can at the best 
only slowly and reluctantly be made to subside.”— -Ib. 

“ Such were Garibaldi’s reasonings, such his motives and actions. 
His countrymen—the world—may well pause before they sit in 
judgment against him.”— Ib. 

“It will then, and only then, be easy to make out the extent of 
the Government’s connivance with Garibaldi, at least at the early 
stage of the undertaking. On the other hand, however willing the 
King and the Ratazzi Ministry might be to allow the affair to fall 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 337 

to the ground, tlie former from an impulse of generosity, tlie latter 
from prudential motives, it is not easy to see on what ground 
Garibaldi and his accomplices can be either absolved or am¬ 
nestied.”— Liberal Paper. 

The following letter has been addressed by Garibaldi to the 
Palermo journal 11 Martello dei Preti :—“I applaud the re-appear¬ 
ance of your Martello , and I hope that you will not cease to use it to 
combat the evil genius of the priests, who, in the holy name of God, 
destroy the soul, the life, and the liberty of the people. The 
priests are incorrigible, and they require to be treated with blows 
from the hammer. At one time we respected them, thinking that 
they wished to serve our causo, but that was an error on our part; 
but now they are like a swarm of locusts, which spoil and destroy 
everything. Let us raise our voices, and show the people the truth. 
—G. Garibaldi.” 

The conduct of Victor Emmanuel towards Garibaldi has been 
mean, temporising, and ungenerous. In fact, there can be little or 
no reciprocal confidence between the patriot, who so frequently and 
so fervently expresses “ his undying hatred” for the Man of 
December— 

Sappi 

Ch’io non t’amo da vero, e non t’amai, 

E se i miei labbri mai 
Ch’io t’amo a te diranno, 

Non mi credere, Augusto, allor t’inganno. 

Metastasto. 

and the monarch who proclaims his profound veneration for the 
Liberator of Italy, by whom he has been robbed of his most ancient 
patrimony, and who regards him merely as the vicar or vassal of 
France. What concord can there be between the light of honest 
enthusiasm and the darkness of crooked perfidy? Garibaldi has 
always been regarded at Turin with jealousy and distrust. 

“The Two Sicilies were won. Garibaldi got cold thanks; he 
withdrew to his island home, bitter against Cavour, who had sold 
his native town, who jockeyed him, as he conceived, out of the 
reward of his achievements—the only reward he aspired to—the pre¬ 
ferment of his friends and followers.”— Times. 

1 ‘ In the hazardous enterprise in which I and my companions had 

Y 


338 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


thrown ourselves, with heads bent, I hoped nothing good from the 
Government of Katazzi. But ivhy should I not have hoped for less 
rigour on the part of the King , having altered in nothing the old pro- 
gramme, and having decided not to alter it at any price? What 
afflicts me most is this fatal distrust , which contributes not a little to 
the incompletion of national unity.”— Garibaldi. 

“ The publication of Garibaldi’s account of the affair at Aspro- 
monte—an account which has not yet been officially refuted—has 
brought down upon the editor of the Diritto a sentence of eighteen 
months in car cere duroB—Liberal Taper. 

II merto appunto e il tuo maggior nemico. 

Metastasio. 

“Whenever he met opposition, or even hesitation, on the part of 
public functionaries in Sicily, it is said he invariably ended by over¬ 
turning all scruples and difficulties by the production of certain 
papers which, for ought we know, are still in his hands. Whether 
it may be advisable to have these papers hauled over in the Senate, 
and printed in every newspaper throughout Europe, it is for Govern¬ 
ment to consider. The King, God bless him! is neither the most 
prudent nor the most temperate of men either in speech or in 
writing, and the correspondence between him and the captive of 
Aspromonte was at a late period incessant.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The immense importance of the man’s former services, the 
sacredness of the cause, however desperate, to which he devoted 
himself, the serenity of his heroic countenance, the fixedness of his 
lion gaze, nay, the very unsteadiness of his gait, the evidence of his 
wounds, will plead for Garibaldi in a language that no judge, no 
Court will have power to withstand.”— Liberal Paper. 

This feeling of ingratitude on the part of Victor Emmanuel was 
strongly evinced after his Neapolitan expedition. 

“ The Opposition papers, and even some of the most moderate 
supporters of the Government .... enumerate the slights ( sfregi) 
under which it is too evident that the great soul of the self-banished 
hermit of Caprera is smarting.”— Times. 

“ There was no room for him among the rival generals and un¬ 
friendly statesmen of the Italian Court.”— Saturday Review. 

“ The man who has filled the world with his name for the last six 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


339 


months, returns to eat the potatoes which he had sown before 
setting out to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Although 
it was his own will that it should be so, and although he parted on 
the most friendly terms with the King (?), no one who has looked on 
from afar at the events which raised the Italian hero to his exalted 

position, can help being impressed by such a solution.No 

king or emperor wielded such unlimited and almost superhuman 
power as Garibaldi did during the last half year. It was the power 
of love, gratitude, and devotion, the strongest which man can wield 
over his fellow-creatures .... Master of half of Italy, he, with one 
stroke of the pen, surrendered the mastery to make Victor 

Emmanuel King of Italy.The enthusiasm with which the 

King met was trifling compared with that lavished on Garibaldi.” 
—Saturday Review . 

When men grow fast 

Honour’d and lov’d, there is a trick in state 
(Which jealous princes never fail to use) 

How to decline that growth, with fair pretext 
And honourable colours of employment, 

Either by embassy, the war, or such, 

To shift them forth into another air, 

Where they may purge and lessen. 

Ben Jonson. 


Comincia ad adombrarmi 
La gloria di costui; ciascun mi parla 
Delle conquiste sue; Roma lo chiama 
II suo liberatore ; egli se stesso 
Troppo conosce. 

* * * * * 

Veramente per lui giunge all’ eccesso 
L’idolatria del volgo omai si scorda 
Quasi del suo sovrano. 

Metastasio, “ Ezio .” 

II mio favore 
Troppo ardito ti fe 

Chi son io terammenta, e chi tu sei.— lb. 

If Garibaldi had succeeded in obtaining Rome for Piedmont, the 
■modus operandi would have been wholly overlooked, and the “ con¬ 
quering hero ” been cordially welcomed at Turin. 

y 2 




340 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE B0NAPARTE8 ? 


Victor Emmanuel. 

Duce, un momento 

Non posso tollerar d’esserti ingrato— 

II Tebro vendicato, 

La mia grandezza, il mio riposo, e tutto 
Del senno tuo, del tuo valore e frutto. 

Garibaldi. 

Signor, quando fra l’anni 
A pro di Roma, a pro di te se stidai, 

Nell’ opra istessa io la merce trovai; 

Che mi resta a boamar ? l’amor d'augusto 
Quando ottener poss’ io, 

Basta questo al mio cor. 

Victor Emmanuel. 

Non basta al mio— 

Vuo che ’1 mondo conosca, 

Che se premiarti appieno 
Cesare non pot&, tentollo almeno 
***** 

Un suddito tuo pari 
E maggior d’ogni Re—se non possiedi, 

Tu doni i regni ; e ’1 possedergli e caso. 

II donargli e virtu. 

Metastasio, “ Ezio .” 

His failure was his only fault. Few incidents in history are more 
telling, or more touching, than his anxiety to avoid shedding the 
blood of the Piedmontese troops, by whose superior numbers he was 
overpowered. The hostile Greneral might have truly exclaimed— 

Quand j’ai verse le sang de ce Her ennemi, 

Tout le mien s’est emu ; j’ai tremble, j’ai fremi; 

II m’a merne paru que ce heros terrible 
Devenu tout a coup a sa perte insensible, 

Avare de mon sang quand je versais le sien, 

Aux depens de ses jours s’est abstenu du mien. 

Crebillon. 

The officer who made such a man a prisoner must have felt that he 
was discharging an irksome and ignominious duty : — 

Piedmontese Officer. 

La tua compiango, amico, 

E la sventura mia, che mi riduce 
Un ufficio a compir contrario tanto 
Alla nostra amicizia, al genio antico. 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 341 


Garibaldi {gli da la spada). 

Prendi; Augusto compiangi, e non 1’amico, 

Eecagli quel acciaro, 

Che gli difese il trono— 

Eammentagli chi so no, 

E yedilo arrossir. 

Piedmontese Ofeicf.r. 

Ma se Cesare istesso il reo ti chiama. 

Garibaldi. 

Puo dirlo Augusto 

Ma crederlo non puo—s’anche un momento 
Guingesse a dubitarne, ove si volga 
Vede la mi a difesa—Italia .... 

La sua grandezza, il conservato impero, 

Einfaccias gli supra, che non e yero. 

Metastasio. 

Since the affair at Aspromonte, The Times has diluted the oil of 
panegyric with no small admixture of the gall of bitterness and 
blame, though still doing justice to many of his great and good 
qualities:— 

“ Endowed in the highest degree with courage, presence of mind, 
and dexterity in the manoeuvres of partisan warfare, and attended 
hitherto by a success bordering on the miraculous, this extraordinary 
man has shown, in the affairs of civil and political life, a simplicity, 
a weakness—shall we say a folly ?—which forcibly reminds us of 
the inconsistency of our nature, and places him very near the base, 
as well as very near the summit, of the scale of intellect and 
ability. ’ ’— Times . 

“ Garibaldi is on the ground, never again to rise. Whatever 
events the future may have in store for Italy, Garibaldi’s game is 
played out. He is old, prematurely old, broken in health, worn 
by fits of excessive activity, still more wasted by long periods of 
involuntary repose. The gout tortures and paralyses his limbs, 
sorrow will soon gnaw into his very soul. 

u The lion is down : there will be no lack of ignoble animals eager 
to administer the last kick. But Garibaldi belongs to history; justice 
must be done to a name which cannot pass away. It is not enough 
for his enemies to descant on his lack of prudence, on his over¬ 
weening self-conceit, his ignorance, his obstinacy, they even impugn 


342 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAJPARTES ? 

his veracity, his self-denial, his boundless generosity, his consistency, 
his singleness of mind and purpose. Garibaldi, however, may well 
afford to abide the judgment of public opinion. Had he never 
spoken or written, or suffered others to write and speak in his name, 
the sentence would be all the more favourable to him. As it is, if 
he is brought before the Senate at Turin, before a council of war, 
or before any civil or military court, silence beseems him as the most 
efficient defence. Like the great Homan of old, he may ask his 
judges to follow him to the Temple of the gods. ‘ On such a day 
I gave Italy her Southern provinces, and achieved her unity; let us 
give thanks to the Almighty! ’ It would be mere cavil and chicane 
to inquire by whom the conquest of the Two Sicilies and their 
annexation were achieved. The initiative of the enterprise belongs 
te Garibaldi; it could belong to him alone.”— Times. 

“ In his own country, Garibaldi will never again be tempted to 
take the initiative. Even if he were capable of such another ill- 
advised step as the one which led to the disaster of Aspromonte, he 
would soon find that, all-powerful as he is to do good, he would not 
be allowed to do the same mischief over again.”— lb. 

“ As to Garibaldi, if he have not the luck to meet death in some 
skirmish, it is probable he will be kept in prison, at least for a 
while. He is either a traitor to his King or a maniac, and, in 
either case, he must be incapacitated, when taken, from beginning 
again .”—English Paper. 

We have been often told that Austria has relinquished all 
hope of seeing the treaty of Villafranca carried into effect:— 

“ Already Count Kechberg has made known to the world that 
Austria relinquished all hopes of Lombardy, and resigned the 
dethroned dukes and archdukes to their fate. The only bone of 
contention between Austria and Italy is, therefore, Venice; and the 
principle that ‘ those should keep who can ’ must become European 
law till those who think they ought to take, possess also the means 
of enforcing their claims.”— Times. 

But we may infer from the following paragraph, that the desire 
to obtain justice for herself, and see it meted out to others, is not 
dead, but sleeps, in that quarter :— 


“ It is well known that beyond the Alps troops are rpady in the 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 343 

adjoining provinces to march, at the first signal; that extraordinary 
measures of precaution have been taken along the coasts of Trieste, 
Istria, and Dalmatia; that the civil and military government of the 
coast has been again confided to a general; that in the different 
towns of Venetia and of the country of Trent there are arrests of 
suspected persons, which Austria always makes when she is threat¬ 
ened with war in Italy; and that, at Trieste and on the coast, 
measures of rigour are threatened against good patriots in order to 
prevent them from doing mischief at the moment of action. Neither 
the soldiery, nor the Austrian authorities, nor the small number of 
partisans which Austria has in Venetia, conceal the hopes which have 
been excited in their minds by the Garibaldian expedition. These hopes 
show themselves in different ways—at the Bourse by the sudden 
oscillations in the public funds, in the Austrian journals, and in the 
letters sent from Vienna to the other German papers. Pleasure is 
expressed at seeing the best Italian troops in Southern Italy, either 
to keep down the brigands or oppose the volunteers of Garibaldi; 
at seeing Sicily escape from the hands of the Italian Government, 
and the Neapolitan provinces becoming the scene of fresh diffi¬ 
culties ; and lastly, that the Italian question may again become the 
subject of negociations and interventions on the part of Europe. 
The anticipation is that serious events are about to arrive, and that 
all alliances being once broken, others will be formed.”— Liberal 
Paper. 

The Man of December was, probably, rather disappointed than 
delighted with Garibaldi’s defeat, as it deprived him of a pretext for 
interfering, on his own behalf, in the affairs of Southern Italy:— 

“ It is a very significant fact, that, during the whole time of 
Garibaldi’s operations, the Emperor has held in his hand the 
thunderbolt of war, ready to launch it upon the Italian peninsula. 
The moment he heard of the defeat and capture of Garibaldi, the 
camp at Chalons was broken up. Had the news received been of a 
victory, instead of a defeat, it is probable that the camp might 
indeed have been broken up, but by orders which would have trans¬ 
ferred its operations from the banks of the Marne to those of the 
Garigliano or the Volturno.” 

“ There are those about me who have not the least doubt that, 
were Garibaldi to cross the strait, and overrun Naples as he did 


314 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


Sicily, a French, force of 20,000 or 30,000 men would be landed at- 
Naples, and that would, sooner or later, bring about the severance 
of the South from the North of Italy. ‘ That is, and has long been, 
Napoleon’s look out,’ these friends of mine say ; ‘ you may depend 
upon it.’ ” 

. “ It is difficult to fathom the abyss to the brink of which he had 
brought the national cause. Had he overrun the mainland, as he 
went the whole length of the island kingdom, there is no doubt but 
France would have settled matters at Naples in 1862, as she did at 
Home in 1849. As it turns out, it is difficult, even in the midst of the 
awe inspired by the upshot of this tragic episode, to repress a smile at 
the disappointment of the Emperor Napoleon, whose 30,000 French¬ 
men, under M‘Mahon, were already preparing to cross the Neapolitan 
frontier. The great pretext for interference has been removed, and 
henceforth if the Emperor meddles with Italy, it must be at his own 
peril.” 

“Does not this infatuated man know, that the great mass of 
educated opinion in France is hostile to the consolidation of Italy 
into one kingdom, and that if to that b8 added the natural suscepti¬ 
bility of a military nation for the honour of its flag, it will become 
impossible for the Emperor to withdraw his troops from Home, and 
absolutely necessary for him to wash out by a decisive victory the 
affront to the French arms ?” 

Garibaldi is very roundly and roughly taken to task by the 
Printing House Square censor for denouncing in strong language 
the tortuous and treacherous policy of the great enemy of Italy’s 
prosperity, peace, and independence : — 

“One is astonished to read the language in which Garibaldi 
allows himself to speak of the Emperor of the French. It is so 
coarse, that we cannot understand how a person of ordinary feeling 
or education could condescend, under any circumstances of provoca- 
cation, to employ it.”— Times. 

And yet there has appeared in The Times itself, within the last 
few days, a condemnatory sentence, of which the acerbity is as 
striking as the truthfulness, and which, when placed in juxtaposition 
with a recent declaration of Garibaldi’s, appears to be more stinging 
and more severe:— 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


345 


“It is not our intention to be the apologists of the Emperor 
Napoleon. "We did not disguise our horror of the scenes which 
occurred in Paris after the 2nd of December. We do not accept 
success as a divinity. Our honest sympathies cannot he with a rule 
which interferes with free speech and crushes the liberty of the press .”— 
Times. 

“ Where the sun of liberty does not shine—where the priest main¬ 
tains the darkness of ignorance and superstition— where the power of 
the stranger heeps alive a doomed idol , by lending it a sword already 
stained with the blood of one nation to strihe to death another —there it 
is necessary that a great organised force should work in unity for its 
liberty, its independence, and its civilisation.”— Garibaldi. 

The British press raised an universal outcry against the, at one 
time, apparently contemplated trial of Garibaldi : — 

“ Indeed, the mere trial itself will be a shock to Italian feeling. If 
Garibaldi only stands a prisoner at the bar, that is enough; the 
spectacle will jar with every patriotic emotion; will nauseate tho 
whole nation ; and send everybody home melancholy and sick at 
heart. There he will stand, the undeniable founder of Italian 
unity, a criminal before Italian judges, and a criminal on the very 
ground of a blow struck for Italy. The Liberator of Italy will be 
arraigned as a traitor to the Crown and Government of Italy.” 

“ The charge of rebellion against Garibaldi and his followers has 
in it something so transcendently wicked and abominable, that every 
honest mind must reprobate it, and execrate those who should dare 
to bring it forward. If there is treason in Italy, it is on the Throne 
itself, where there sits a pusillanimous Monarch, who, allowing him¬ 
self to be caught by the perfidious snares of the blackest-hearted 
man that ever trod the earth, takes up arms against a man who is 
resolved at all hazards to rid his country of a hated enemy.”— 
Liberal Paper. 

11 There is one very short and easy way of settling it, which would 
answer all the purposes of the Italian Government—that Garibaldi 
should pledge himself to his old comrade and friend, Victor 
Emmanuel, on his parole, to leave Europe for an indefinite term. 
He is almost as much at home at Molite Video as he is in Italy, and a 
few years’ absence would efface the recollection of one extravagant 
and infatuated act, and leave on the minds of his countrymen only the 


346 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


memory of his transcendent services. But once place a man before 
the bar of his country, arraign him as a traitor, and sentence him as 
a criminal, and the stamp remains upon him ; others never forget it, 
and he never forgets it; but who would wish such a stamp to be 
fixed upon the heroic founder of Italian unity?”— Liberal Paper. 

It reflects honour upon Garibaldi that he repudiated the disgrace 
of being “ amnestied” by the very Government which had duped 
and deceived him. The man, whom the first physicians of so many 
nations had hastened to attend and to watch over, must have suffered 
more from mental anguish at monarchical and ministerial ingrati¬ 
tude, than from the wound inflicted on the field of battle :— 

“A letter received from Genoa of the 8th instant, states that 
Colonel Santa Bosa proceeded on the afternoon of the 5th to Varig- 
nano, and announced to General Garibaldi that he had received a 
despatch from Turin, telling him that a decree of amnesty had been 
signed. He further told the General that, by virtue of the amnesty, 
he was thenceforth free. 

“ General Garibaldi replied that the guilty alone could be amnestied — 
that he would not accept such a favour—and that Europe should shortly 
/enow the entire truth.”—Liberal Paper. 

VI.— Discontent in Naples and other Provinces. 

There is, I believe, scarcely any province within the precincts of 
the motley and miscellaneous Italian kingdom, which would not 
now exclaim— 

Obsecro et obtestor, vitoe me redde priori. 

The King of Naples, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Duke of 
Modena, and the Duchess of Parma would be received with acclama¬ 
tion in their respective residences, and I question whether Lombardy 
would not prefer Austrian rule, to the indirect domination of the 
Man of December, through the medium of his Piedmontese viceroy. 
We have been lately told that “ the Emperor has proclaimed the 
right of every country to freely regulate the conditions of its 
existence ; though some do not comprehend that Victor Emmanuel 
alone can represent in Italy the principle of order—forget the decla¬ 
rations of the Minister without portfolio (M. Billault), that Italian 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


347 


unity was now an accomplished fact; and dreaming of chimerical 
restorations of former dynasties , forget that the independence of Italy 
has cost France 30,000 soldiers.”— Liberal Paper. 

But after the ill-omened restoration of the Bonapartes at Paris, 
which seemed as “ chimerical ” as it has proved calamitous, no prince 
need despair, who has been unjustly dispossessed of his domi¬ 
nions :— 

* 

“ The recent events in Sicily and Naples have raised the hopes of 
the exiled Italian Princes, and they are said to he prepared to take 
advantage of any chance of returning to their States which may 
present itself. The Duke of Modena has returned to Vienna, and 
Queen Maria of Naples is on her way back to Borne, where the 
ex-King, her husband, still is.”— Times. 

11 Public security has made no progress anywhere in Italy ; it has 
gone back by several degrees in various quarters.”— Liberal Paper. 

“At her very gates, she has a formidable enemy, whose armies 
and ill-will, easily understood, will for a long time be an imminent 
danger.”— lb. 

“Italy, as a new State, has against her those who hold to the 
traditions of the past; as a State which has called revolution to her 
assistance, she inspires distrust to all men of order. They doubt her 
power to put down anarchical tendencies, and hesitate to believe 
that a society can firmly find a basis upon the very elements which 
have upset so many others.”— Man of December. 

Her most “ formidable enemy ” is the Second of December himself, 
who has completely within his control the policy of her King, and 
the destinies of her people :— 

“This very judicious measure took the wind out of the sails of 
the promoters of disorder, especially of the Bourbonites, who always 
fish in troubled waters; and it showed also an approximation on the 
part of the Government to that large popular party whose aid is so 
very necessary to restore peace to the southern provinces. So late as 
Saturday or Sunday it had been resolved to put down all demonstrations , 
and there was great and general discontent; accordingly, by orders 
received from Turin, a manifesto was issued on Sunday, which con¬ 
cluded thus :— 1 The Government authorities will not prevent any 
dignified and citizen manifestation of joy. It will only prevent 


348 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


excesses, which might produce disorder, the effects of which it is 
impossible to calculate. The fete will take place, and the authorities 
will take care that it shall not be disturbed.”— Times. 

“Several important arrests have been made during the fete , 
showing that wherever there are any hopes of a row the birds of 
evil omen are always hovering about.”— lb. 

“It is certain that Naples would only yield its pretensions, in 
many respects well founded, to being declared the capital of Italy, 
and the seat of government, in case of political events or the will of 
Napoleon assigning that honorary distinction to the more central and 
venerable city of Home .”—Morning Post. 

11 Italy is certainly in a most unquiet state. The condition of 
uncertainty which prevails is fatal to all enterprise and injurious to 
all trade. The duration of the Ministry is most doubtful, and yet no 
one presumes to say who are to replace them. The painful convic¬ 
tion is on every mind, that the fate of Italy is not entrusted to 
Italians, but rests with him whose policy takes a wider sweep than 
the space ‘between the Alps and the Adriatic,’ and whose ambition 
will never be thwarted by any consideration for a united Italy.”— 
Liberal Paper. 

“ Italy can scarcely be said to have advanced since the year began, 
either in her internal development, or in her hopes of Venice and 
Home. Her debt has increased, brigandage is still but imperfectly 
subdued, and the prestige of the popular leader to whose self-devo¬ 
tion the larger half of her newly-acquired territory is due, has been 
seriously impaired by his own deplorable rashness. The defeat of 
Graribaldi at Aspromonte, although it delivered Italy from a grievous 
peril, has, it may be feared, weakened and divided the forces by 
which the nation was called into existence .”—Saturday Review. 

“At least 300,000, or, in another year, 400,000—perhaps, before 
we are much older, half a million—of Italians must be removed from 
every practical career of social usefulness, and must eat the bread of 
barrack idleness, till such time as they may be made ready for their 
all-important work on the field. Until France perceive the folly of 
her policy at Home, and until Austria acknowledge the impossibility 
of reconciling Venice to her yoke, no man in his senses would advise 
the Italians to disarm; no man would find fault with them, were 
they, by a levy en masse , to turn the whole Peninsula into a vast 
camp. Of all these 300,000 or 350,000 men, all in the prime and 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 349 

pride of youth, not one is married, not one is allowed to marry.” 
—Saturday Review. 

“Every severity has been tried, and with one sole result—a 
multiplication of the bands and a stronger hatred of the rule of 
Piedmont. The people care nothing for Pome or for united Italy. 
They want a humane and civilised Government, a decent magistracy, 
a just administration of the code, safety for life and property, pro¬ 
tection to those engaged in commerce or rural pursuits, from arbi¬ 
trary arrest or fusillation: they do not want overflowing prisons, 
corrupt courts of justice, torture to extort confession, a regime of spies 
and police agents, martial law, and a state of siege in their capital— 
wholesale fusillades in the remoter districts, an entire press gagged, 
and even foreign correspondents expelled, lest the truth should leak 
out through their means. All these things Naples might have had 
without changing dynasties, and it was scarcely worth while to have 
gone to Turin to import such liberty as this. Were Pome the capital 
of Italy to-morrow, the system would merely be extended here, and 
in the Neapolitan provinces the ferment would go on unchecked as 
it does now. It springs from the intense disappointment engendered by 
the rupture of every engagement Piedmont made with her new subjects, 
from the difference of character and race between the northern and southern 
populations, from the air de vanqueur openly assumed by the Sardinian 
soldiery, and the contempt with which everything Neapolitan is 
treated at Turin.”— Liberal Paper. 

“No one seeks to dissemble the fact, that the new Administration 
comes into power in a very disastrous and perilous moment, and that 
they have to face difficulties before which the most intrepid might 
quail.”— lb. 

“ Italy presents the very strangest of all phenomena, an orderly 
and submissive people under a helpless anarchic Government. No 
doubt, brigandage, common crime, and other disorders are rife 
enough in the country; but it may be proved, that these evils exist 
only because the Government provides no remedies to them; nay, 
more, that the Government deserves no credit, if these evils are not 
a hundred times more general and more grievous.” 

1 .—Piedmont itself is less contented than formerly, and harassed 
with taxes and conscriptions, beside being an object of dislike and 
jealousy to all the other provinces, whilst the Government disgusts 
the country by its illegal and arbitrary policy :— 


350 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES f 


“ It is sad to think that, while all the cares of the Government are 
engrossed by great political questions, public security in this country 
makes so little progress. Even in this dull but quiet and ordinary city 
of Turin, three persons were mortally stabbed in cold blood in three 
different quarters in one night, from the 13th to the 14th of this 
month. These murderous attempts are not prompted by thirst for 
gain, as the pockets of the persons thus slain are found untouched, 
and, unfortunately, we seldom hear of the criminals being brought to 
justice. Murder is no less frequent in most other places, and, what 
is worse, the escape of malefactors from the ill-guarded prisons is 
matter of rather common occurrence. Decidedly the administration 
of the state, and especially of the police, needs thorough reform.”— 
Liberal Paper. 

“ Gentlemen, with such precedents, liberty will not be established 
in Italy, and constitutional life will remain a dream. And if such a 
system of arbitrary measures and illegality is to be sanctioned, who 
can tell that what has happened to us yesterday may not happen 
to-morrow to you ? Once begun, arbitrary measures, more or less 
disguised, will reign in Italy, and our country will become the prey 
to passions and civil struggles .”—Speech in Italian Parliament. 

“It seems to be forgotten, however, by all the extreme Liberals, 
that never were the liberties of Italy in such extreme danger as 
during the last two or three weeks, and that repression, however 
painful, is now the only policy of salvation. The Government, 
perhaps badly informed, has failed to display that energy and 
activity which the circumstances demanded, until provinces have 
been devastated, hundreds, and it will be no exaggeration to say 
thousands, of lives have been sacrificed, and the inhabitants of many 
districts are afraid to leave their houses. The magnitude of the evil, 
however, has now assumed such proportions, that measures of rigour 
are being adopted which should have taken effect a year since.”— 
Times. 

2.—What is strangely called “brigandage” is an effort to rescue 
Naples from the degraded position of being only a provincial 
appendage to Turin 

‘ ‘ The population can never learn to love or support a regime which 
bases itself on terrorism, and, what is more hateful to Naples, is not 
a Neapolitan tyranny. Men will bear much from a native ruler 


otmttT erahce To worship the bonapartes? 85 X 

they will not tolerate from an alien King. The Sardinians can 
barely make themselves understood in Naples or the provinces, and 
are not held to be Italians in the proper sense by the Southern 
races, and this is one great bar to their amalgamation. If the 
Government, as it does, confesses itself too weak to raise the state of 
siege or grant an amnesty, is it not in itself a plain confession that 
it has neither the confidence nor the support of the population ? A 
strong and popular Government can afford to be merciful, but 
tyranny is always cowardly in its action .”—Liberal Paper. 

“In Naples the people complain much of the want of attention, 
the tardiness, the heavy routine, which are the characteristics of the 
Turin Government, when dealing with many of the improvements 
required, and even initiated, by the Southern provinces. It is very 
needful that something should be done to reconcile Naples to the 
part of provincial city which she has accepted.”— Pb. 

“ Since Garibaldi took possession of Naples on the 7th of Septem¬ 
ber, 1860, no less than six or seven Governors, civil and military, 
have been sent there to fill the same office in different capacities, 
and every man has proved more or less a failure.”— lb. 

“ For the last two or three nights, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd companies 
of the 7th battallion of the National Guard have been hunting down 
some “ Camoristi ” and disbanded soldiers who have taken refuge in 
the hills about Camaldoni and Pozzuoli. Of course a good and 
speedy account will be rendered of them.”— Pb. 

“The loss of the national autonomy, the destruction of all our 
property, the robbery of our native wealth, the misery of millions of 
unhappy persons, the outrages offered to our most holy religion, 
and, yet more, the experience of two years of misfortune, have 
proved to us but too well what revolution can give to a people. To 
the happiness predicted, to the prosperity dreamt of, has succeeded, 
with wretchedness, a universal lamentation, and the most solemn 
disenchantment .”—Francis II. 

“The strong provincial antipathies of the Italians could not bo 
lulled for more than a short season. The pride of the most 
populous and wealthy city of Italy, lately the capital of an im¬ 
portant kingdom, and the seat of a rich and luxurious Court, was 
deeply wounded at sinking into a mere provincial town, to be visited 
occasionally as a favour by a Piedmontese Sovereign, but to be 
permanently administered by martinet soldiers or pompous civilians 


352 


OUGHT PHAKCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


from Turin. So strong have been the discontents in the South as to 
give some reason to those who believed that it would have been 
better if the Revolution of 1860 had placed another Sovereign on 
the Neapolitan throne as it then was, and made Italy into two 
friendly and allied but independent States, instead of into one so 
ill-joined and badly cemented as the Kingdom of Italy .”—Liberal 
Paper. 

“I have spoken of brigandage lately en masse as extending over 
provinces and desolating rich plains, burning, murdering, and 
leaving ruin and lamentation behind. Horrible as the picture is, 
it has attracted less attention from the very vastness of its pro¬ 
portions.”— lb. 

“ As to the South itself, it would be difficult, indeed, to deprecate 
the continuation of the state of siege there for a few weeks more, 
seeing that the measure, harsh and illegal as it certainly was, was 
nevertheless attended with good effects, and was hailed by the 
Neapolitans especially as a most salutary provision.”— lb. 

“There is discontent at Naples, dislike of the Piedmontese, and 
chagrin at seeing the Bourbon capital descend to the level of a 
provincial town.”— lb. 

“The Reactionists would once more raise their heads, encouraged 
by the new miseries, which they would trace, with some justice, to 
the present system of Government.”— lb. 

“I do not deny that the state of siege may, for a while, establish 
calmness in the streets and market-place of a town, but in the hearts 
of the people it kindles the fire of hatred.”— lb. 

“ See the jealousies and natural regrets of provinces at losing the 
distinction of independence ; of cities at sinking into the poverty and 
dulness of provincial towns ; and of local magnates at finding them¬ 
selves no longer the honoured companions of a reigning prince. ”— 
lb. 

“ And yet visitors to this regenerated land report general murmur¬ 
ing, and no small measure of disaffection to the Government. The 
state of the Two Sicilies has been so serious ever since the fall of the 
Bourbon Monarchy that the national army has had no rest. Brig¬ 
andage instigated from Rome, and either encouraged by the 
peasantry or submitted to, from a belief that King Francis would 
in the end prove stronger than King Victor Emmanuel, has shaken 
the authority of the Government in the South. Tiie city of Naples 


I 


OUGHT TRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 353 

kas had its own discontents. Society lias not been satisfied with the 
Piedmontese Sovereign .”—-Liberal Paper. 

“ The Parliamentary committee deputed to examine General 
La Marmora’s report upon the brigandage in the Neapolitan 
jirovinces has communicated to the Chambers the conclusions at 
which it has arrived thereon. The committee state that the General’s 
report is incomplete, and censure in several points the system 
pursued by the Government. They express their belief that the 
principal causes of brigandage are the insufficient confidence of the 
populations in the present state of things and the stay of the French 
at Pome. The committee point out the measures necessary to 
inspire confidence, and associate the country with the efforts of the 
Government, and conclude by proposing the appointment of a special 
committee to thoroughly investigate the matter, and to make a 
further report to the Chamber.”— II. 

u Certainly no city had so great a claim on the Prince as Naples, 
which, from having been the capital of a considerable kingdom, saw 
itself reduced all at once to a provincial town, and which, having 
been wounded in its vanity by the loss of its self-government, and 
still more in its material interests by the sufferings of the last four 
or five years, would have been much conciliated by the royal presence, 
and revived by the consequent increased trade. I know not how it 
is, but it certainly is the fact that, while the forcing system has been 
carried out to excess in Southern Italy, and many sacrifices imposed 
upon it, still very little has been done to soften down irritated feeling, 
and to provide for the relief of the population.”— Times. 

“ Considering that the transference elsewhere of the Government 
and the Italian Parliament could be productive of no danger or in¬ 
convenience to the other jirovinces of Italy, while their removal to 
Naples, until Pome be free, would be an immense benefit to these 
provinces, the general and profound discontent of which would cease 
immediately: 

“ The undersigned express the fervid wish, that the Italian 
Government, as well as the Italian Parliament, should transfer their 
seat as speedily as possible to Naples until the arrival of the great 
day in which Italy shall have Pome for its permanent capital.”— 
Neapolitan Meeting. 

“ The worst of it is that the National Guards cannot be depended 
on in the smaller towns and villages, principally for the reason that 

z 


354 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


they are paralysed by fear; and I believe it will be found that, in 
their desperation, many of all classes join or supply the brigands in 
order to secure their personal safety. Great rigour is now to be 
exercised towards such persons.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ Colonel Bosco is reputed to be at the head of 700 mounted men, 
who are sent out on foraging expeditions in all directions, and who 
carry off and set a price on persons without mercy. This body is 
well organised, is divided into companies, each company having its 
full number of officers, who, if all that is said be true, are resolved 
to dare and do everything for the restoration of the ex-King.”— lb. 

“Under such circumstances, no wonder that the Turin Govern¬ 
ment, as we are informed to-day, has come to the desperate resolution 
of putting the island of Sicily in a state of siege. The full civil and 
military powers vested in a soldier in either of the Southern kingdoms, 
truly already differed but little from martial law, and the constitu¬ 
tion might be looked upon as actually suspended at Naples, no less 
than at Palermo ; but there is something in a name, and the actual 
words ‘ state of siege ’ have an unpleasant sound in civilised ears; 
Count Cavour had died with these memorable words on his lips, 

‘ I will have no state of siege ; any man can govern with a state of 
siege.’ ”— lb. 

“We have sorrowful news from Sicily. The discontent, far from 
abating on the first report of Garibaldi’s downfall at Aspromonte, 
seems now to seek a different vent. Bourbonism is said to be in 
the ascendancy, and several movements in that sense are reported.” 
—Ib. 

‘ ‘ I ventured to express an opinion, that the abolition of the 
autonomy of the Two Sicilies was an imprudent, and would prove 
an unhappy measure. Experience has shown the correctness of 
such an opinion.”— Ib. 

“ Last, but not least, comes the grievance that most of the places 
are monopolised by Italians from the Continent, and that Sicily is 
not at all represented in the Ministry, in which the great majority 
are Piedmontese.”— Ib. 

“There seems (says the correspondent of the Temps) to be a 
deliberate plan, a partipris , to deceive Europe as to the state of the 
Abruzzi and Apuglia. An incredible obstinacy in some quarter— 
the fault is so very grave that I dare not charge it upon any one in 
particular—either refuses reinforcements, or shrinks from applying 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


355 


for them. Despatches are daily published and transmitted abroad 
relating that so many banditti have given themselves up, great 
successes, decisive victories over them are proclaimed, there is a 
tremendous flourish of trumpets; and yet the evil grows worse than 
ever. It is beyond doubt, that, only very lately, the band of 
Ohiavone has been more active than ever in kidnapping, pillaging, 
ransoming, and murdering; it is certain that the Foggia diligence 
has just been stopped and plundered only three miles from that 
town; it is certain that on the 26th ult., in the environs of Bovino, 
a convoy of goods, despatched by several Neapolitan merchants, 
has been surprised and carried off; that near Isernia the mail 
coach for the Abruzzi had been robbed; that between Foggai and 
Lucera a garde champetre has been shot for warning some travellers 
of an ambuscade of banditti, &c. I do not relate one quarter 
of what I know, and I do not know one quarter of what takes 
place ; and with all this there are no troops. En revanche we have 
proclamations by cart-loads ; every prefect publishes his circular, and 
each circular outstrips its predecessor by its incredible severity— 
that of the Prefect of Otranto, published in the Giornale di Napoli , 
makes the hair of the peaceful Neapolitans stand on end. ... If 
this sort of thing is to continue the unity will lose all its partisans. 
The banditti will never restore Francis II., but the wealthier classes 
will no doubt be brought to regret a time when at all events their 
property was secure. Trust me, this is not merely brigandage ; it is 
a social war. We are tired of proclamations. It is not enough to 
talk about ‘ taking measures,’ so long as you are unable to take 
Crocco. Formerly agriculture was neglected, but now the crops are 
abundant, and Apuglia, which might be the granary of Italy, 
presents the aspect of an immense desert .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ All here are demoralised, or it would not be possible for such a 
man as Pilone to maintain himself where he is as he has done for 
upwards of a year.”— Times. 

If the Grand Duke of Tuscany were to say to any one acquainted 
with the true feelings of a great majority of his subjects, 

Croi3 tu qu’ils me verraient encor avec plaisir ? 

the answer would be unhesitatingly in the affirmative; the loyal 
feeling seems to be gaining ground everywhere. 

z 2 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


356 


lo sento, che risano a gran passi. 

Metastasio. 

“ Tlie complaint of the Florentines is that they are neglected 
that their province and their beautiful city are only thought of in 
connexion with the imposts they pay to the Piedmontese Treasury, 
that the society of Florence is broken up by the fall of the Grand 
Duke. Instead of the Court festivities of a few years since, when 
the Austrian leanings of the sovereign were forgotten in the display 
of a princely hospitality, there are poor Cockney balls given by the 
Piedmontese King’s ‘ Prefetto.’ The noble3 will not attend them, 
the best portion of the foreign residents do not care to go, and the 
only people who enjoy them are the young bourgeois , who flock to 
them as they did to Louis Philippe’s entertainments in the old time. 
This is certainly to Florence a sad falling off. Florence lived by 
pleasing and attracting the world.”— Times. 

“Florence and Naples are, like Parma and Modena, discrowned 
queen-cities, and it might, indeed, be worth while to tell the number 
of the persons who openly show or secretly harbour a regret for the 
past.”— Liberal Taper. 

“At Florence resides an ancient and influential aristocracy but 
partially contented with the existing order of things ; the private 
property of exiled potentates maintains a small army of agents, and 
consequently of emissaries.”— lb. 

“ I hear to-day that the Government have mortally offended the 
Tuscans by deciding that the heir-apparent of Italy is to hold his 
court at Milan instead of Florence, as at first proposed. In truth a 
worse plan could scarcely be conceived, for Florence is pining away 
for want of royalty, and has the splendid Pitti to receive it, while 
Milan has only a second-rate residence, and is three hours distant 
from the Court of Turin.”— lb. 

“ Meanwhile France has taken the initiative, and we have let it 
fall out of our hands. She has concluded a treaty with Italy, 
where, we are told, matters are worse, instead of better, since the 
foundation of the new kingdom. The light duties of Tuscany have 
given way to the heavy duties of Piedmont. The war itself, the tran¬ 
sition from one regime to the another, and the cost of putting down 
brigandage will account for this.”— lb. 

Discontent is also prevalent in Lombardy, Parma, and even in the 
annexed provinces of the Papal territory :— 


t 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 357 

“Gentlemen, you who have been in the provinces among your 
electors, you know that the flood of discontent with the present 
Ministry is rising daily higher and higher. What shall I say of 
Lombardy, that rich, populous, patriotic, heroic province, where the 
Ministry could not find one single friend ? What of Tuscany, that 
most noble and refined province, which has become the key-stone of 
Italy, and which now cannot refrain from openly expressing her 
indignation and grief? What of the Southern provinces, where 
arbitary measures and endless illegalities have destroyed individual 
liberty—where Bourbonites of the worst kind are listened to, 
coaxed, rewarded, and employed by the Ministry, whilst, on the 
other hand, people are arrested and shot without a shadow of legal 
proceedings ? Is it in such a way that Italy is to be made one ? 
It seems as if an evil genius had spread its wings over those un¬ 
happy provinces. The disapprobation of the Cabinet is universal 
throughout Italy. The Ministry has altogether lost its authority. 
The country is disheartened. Anarchy is spreading. The nation 
has lost hope. Let us speak of things as they are ; and I appeal to 
all my colleagues who have been in the provinces .”—Speech in 
Italian Parliament. 

“The agitation in Lombardy seems by no means at an end. To 
put down the popular feeling the military have to patrol the streets 
day and night, and it is contemplated to place Lombardy under 
martial law .”—Liberal Paper. 

“ Indebted to the Dukes for their mushroom honours, such families 
as the Zileri, Benassi, Biondi, &c., were of the Court, courtly; they 
only shone by reflected light, and are mere opaque bodies now the 
sun has departed from among them. These are the real and the 
only implacable enemies of the new kingdom of Italy, and but little 
need be dreaded either from their genius or valour, or their enter¬ 
prising spirit.”— lb. 

“ In the districts of Perugia, Macerata, Ascoli, and Ancona, the 
priests are leaving no stone unturned to set the ignorant peasantry 
against the present order of things, and to inspire new hopes for the 
restoration of the ancient rule. By aiding and abetting the youths 
of the country in their rebellion against the inevitable and inexorable, 
however unpopular, military conscription, these black partisans 
manage to let loose fresh batches of runaway recruits every year, 
thereby striving to keep up a constant disorder and discontent in 


358 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


those provinces, and to press upon the world the conviction of the 
necessity of a return to the former order of things .”—Liberal Paper. 

In a letter, written in 1816, and printed in 1819, I stated the 
grounds on which I considered the subjects of the smaller states to 
be happier and more contented than those of the larger ones, and 
the remarks are, I believe, equally applicable to Italy. Speaking 
of Gfotha, it is observed, that—“ The inhabitants lead a quiet 
peaceable life, undisturbed by politics and ambition. In 
England there are a few great prizes in every profession, for 
which many hundreds are always contending, of whom only 
a few can be gratified, and the great majority must be dissatisfied 
and disappointed. There, also, party rage tinges every mind 
with its venomous influence, and is the mainspring of each man’s 
conduct and opinions. Here, on the other hand, that unhappy, 
uncharitable spirit is utterly unknown; changes of Ministers 
are seldom, if ever, heard of; promotion in the various depart¬ 
ments is gradual, but certain; and a moderate salary enables an in¬ 
habitant of this place, who is prudent and economical, to live 
comfortably and respectably with his family. A hundred or a 
hundred and fifty pounds a-year will supply the wants of a small 
establishment; expensive amusements are not even to be had 
so that those who could not afford them (which are always a 
majority of the people) are not tempted to spend in this way more 
than they ought, or to repine at seeing them enjoyed by wealthier 

persons than themselves.Very few carriages are kept here, 

which causes the town to be very quiet, and removes another source 
of that envy, jealousy, and emulation, which usually subsist in 

larger towns between the different classes of society.”—II. 24. 

“ By the suppression of the small principalities a great deal of 
human happiness has been destroyed. A town, which once was the 
residence of a sovereign, becomes, when the court is annihilated, 
like the estate of an absentee proprietor; the money, which was 
once spent in it, is diverted into other channels ; the gaiety, which 
the com! kept up, is exchanged for gloomy silence. The sight and 
presence of the prince, and the possibility of personally presenting 
their complaints to him, diffuse among the inhabitants a feeling of 
cheerfulness and security. But when the subjects are arbitrarily 
transferred from their lawful sovereign to a foreign master, and 
even, perhaps, more than once from one to another, they cannot, for 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


359 


some generations, acquire a sincere affection for the new family. 
They exchange a prince, whom they saw every day, for one whom 
they never see at all, or, at most, only rarely, and for a short time ; 
and many sources both of fame and of amusement are cut off. It 
is as if the flock of a rector who had constantly resided in his 
parish were transferred to some pampered pluralist, who consumed 
their tithes at a distance.”—-II. 492. 

7.— Francis II. 

“ According to the modern rule of English policy, possession is the 
test of legitimate sovereignty, and it is immaterial to inquire, 
whether a throne has been founded on usurpation .”—Saturday 
Revietv. 

When Louis XVIII. was enthusiastically welcomed at his capital, 
after the signal overthrow of an obstinate and overbearing despot, 
his emancipated subjects apifiied to him the epithet u le Desired' 1 
Let us, for a moment, contemplate the character and demeanour of 
Francis II., in contrast with the conduct and manners of Victor 
Emmanuel, in order to determine which of these two monarchs would 
be regarded at Naples as best entitled to the same designation. When 
the local adherents of the exiled monarch are stigmatised as brigands, 
it would, I think, be far more just and appropriate to designate the 
Piedmontese as burglars. 

“On the 14th, the Sardinian troops occupied one-half of Q-aeta, 
at 8 a.m. At the same time, the Queen, the Princes, the Poyal 
Household, and the Foreign Ministers embarked on board La 
Mouette. The Kang passed the Neapolitan troops in review, who 
wept as they presented arms to him. An immense crowd was 
assembled, and the population shed tears. The King was very pale 
from emotion. Poyal honours were paid to Francis II., as he 
embarked on board La Mouette. As the vessel left, a salute of 
twenty-one guns was fired, and the flags were lowered from the 
batteries, while the garrison shouted ‘ Long live the King ! ’ though 
in presence of the Piedmontese, already in possession.” 

It seems to me, that the terms “brigands and burglars,” are in 
reality most applicable to sovereigns, statesmen, and soldiers, who, 
whilst they abstain from attacking the strong, either with their 


360 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


arms or their accusations, make the weak the victims of their con¬ 
quests, their cruelties, and their calumnies. They “kill and take 
possession ” at Parma, to establish liberty and independence; they 
cringe and crouch at Paris, before the shrine of despotism and 
duplicity. 

“The Union thus tells of an incident at Pome:—‘Whilst the 
anniversary of the Plebiscite was being celebrated at Naples, under 
the direction of the Camorra and the surveillance of the police, a 
touching solemnity took place in the Quirinal, in the apartments of 
their Neapolitan Majesties. The refugee nobles, represented by 
those of its members who are now residing at Pome, presented to 
the King a sword, and to the Queen a diadem, in testimony of their 
fidelity and admiration. The gathering was both numerous and 
brilliant. It comprised the Princes de Spinosa, de Saint Anthimo, 
de Pignatelli, and de Monteroduni; the Dukes de Frezza and 
Civetella; the Marquis de Pivello, and the Count de Lorenzana; 
and among the ladies were the Duchess de Pegina, and the 
Princesses de Montemiletto, de Puftano, de Monteroduni, de Spi¬ 
nosa, &c. It was the Dukes de Pepoli, de Pegina, and de Gallo, 
the Marquis de Mari, and Chevalier Monutola, Grand Bailiff of 
Malta, who presented the sword to Francis II.; and Mary Sophia 
received the diadem from the hands of the Marchioness Guinomandri 
and the Princess de Sapino. It is not necessary to say with what 
emotions the ceremony was marked.’ ” 

“ The ex-King of Naples, in reply to an address presented, with a 
sword of honour for himself, and a diadem for the Queen, from the 
Neapolitan nobility in exile at Pome, said :—‘ The Queen and I 
shall preserve eternally engraved on our hearts the names of you all; 
and the sword, which you offer to me, I hope shall soon rise from its 
scabbard in defence of its sacred rights. If the chances of war have 
been one day unfavourable to us, when we essayed with our brave 
soldiers to repulse an invasion, as unexpected as it was unworthy, I 
have full confidence, that we shall see better days, and that, sup¬ 
ported by the concourse of my people, and surrounded by you, I 
shall remount the throne of my ancestors to restore, like the immortal 
Charles III., for the second time, the independence of my well- 
beloved people. Be, meantime, the interpreters of my sentiments 
and those of the Queen, towards all those wdio are associated with 
you in this new and striking homage of attachment and fidelity. 


I 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 361 

Communicate, I pray you, the expression of our sentiments to the 
absent, who, wandering in the different kingdoms of' Europe, 
co-operate by their incessant efforts towards my restoration; and, 
with that good feeling which distinguishes you, find a way to make 
known the expression of our gratitude to those who, though abiding 
under the ferocious yoke of the foreign invader, have not hesitated 
to inscribe their names alongside of yours.’ ” 

“M. Thourel, for Victor Emmanuel, first attempted to show that 
Francis II. was not King of Naples when the frigates were sold. 
His argument may be thus condensed:—Monarchs no longer are 
permitted to map out peoples at their pleasure ; not royal whim, but 
popular will, is the arbiter of a nation’s fate. Kings are not created 
by the recognition of other kings, but by the consent of those 
amongst whom they rise to reign. From the day on which Victor 
Emmanuel was declared King of Italy by the popular vote, he was 
King of Italy. Francis II. might linger on Neapolitan, or rather 
Italian, territory, but thenceforward he was a rejected alien—a 
would-be usurper. It might be poetical to liken him to Antseus, 
and maintain that so long as he could touch what was his soil, he 
had a chance of recovering his strength ; but in such comparisons 
there was far more sentiment than sense.” 

“ Victor Emmanuel, as his own advocate was compelled to confess, 
was thus placed in the attitude of demanding everything—however small 
—from the man from whom he had taken next to all; M. Berryer had 
thus a chance of appealing to French generosity in favour of 
Legitimism, and obtained a victory for it within the walls of the 
Court, and a by no means despicable manifestation in its favour 
without.” 

“ The power of the King of the Two Sicilies is paralysed, and his 
resources are merely those of a fallen monarch, who has only brought 
with him, far from the land where his ancestors lie, his imperishable 
love for the absent country. But however great may be my ruin, 
and however small my resources, I am King, and as such I owe the 
last drop of my blood and my last crown to my people. The poor 
mite which I now offer to them will certainly have a greater value in 
their eyes under the present necessities, than all which in more 
prosperous times, that will one day return, I could offer them.” 
—Francis II. 

“The Nationalites of to-day asserts, that Signor Ratazzi has 


362 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


obtained the intervention of the Emperor, in order to desire 
Francis II. to quit Home shortly.” 

‘ ‘ The Pope already replied in words, that 1 Pome always was an 
inviolable asylum to all Poyal fugitives, and that a Bonaparte ought 
to remember the time when his family were too glad to avail them¬ 
selves of the only foot of ground that was left for them to inhabit in 
Europe.’ ” 

A letter from Pome, in the Herald , says :—“ The King of Naples 
has received further addresses from almost every class and body of 
his subjects, and the increase of Muratist intrigue is driving even the 
‘ party of action ’ over to the Poyalist side. The Turin Cabinet, it is 
said, has sent a note to M. Drouyn de Lhuys, demanding a cessation 
of the letters of 1 ce cher Prince ’ to 1 ce cher Due' as calculated to 
disturb the status quo , by offering some easy issue from insupportable 
tyranny. Certain it is, that the intrigues have alarmed the Italian 
Government, and that arrests on this score are daily occurring in 
Naples. The letters found on Princess Sciarra are published by the 
police, and are of no great importance, as they only demonstrate 
what every one knows, that the reactionary party are gaining 
strength daily, and only need leaders and a name and organisation 
to effect a restoration. Were this the case, there is little doubt of 
the issue. But France will never tolerate reaction till all chance of 
a Napoleonic dynasty in Najiles is at rest.” 

“As a counter-blow to Picasoli’s note, the Ami de la Religion , 
Montalembert’s paper, brings a protest, signed by 132 names of 
Neapolitan Dukes, Princes, Marquises, Counts, &c., against the 
proofs, which Picasoli gives to show, that the brigandage in the 
South of Italy is void of all political character:—‘Not wishing to 
enter into a minute examination of the circular of the Prime Minister 
of King Victor Emmanuel,’ they are ‘ filled with a sentiment of pity 
at the audacity of persisting to see nothing but brigandage in the 
Neapolitan movement, and of accusing the King (ex) of Naples of 
coining false money.’ They see the great proof of the political 
character of the movement in the Neapolitan aristocracy, of which 
only a part remains at home, whilst the rest has been spending the 
season in Paris and Pome, and travelling abroad.” 

“That sanguinary decree had in a few weeks sacrificed more 
victims than were ever attributed to Ferdinand II., during a reign of 
thirty years, by his most determined adversaries.” 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 363 

u Tlie following are extracts from tlie reply of King Francis II. to 
tlie loyal addresses presented to him by the delegates from the cities 
of Naples and Palermo, the continental provinces, and the islands of 
the kingdom:— 

“‘At this moment, when from every quarter of Neapolitan 
and Sicilian soil addresses covered with thousands of signatures 
reach me, conveying to me grateful assurances of attachment and 
fidelity, I have especial pleasure in acknowledging my sense of 
the expressions of loyalty and affection offered to me on the 
occasion of the new year, in the name of the twenty-two provinces of 
the kingdom—expressions of good augury and of hope, all the more 
gratifying to my heart, in that they manifest the sentiments of our 
devoted and unhappy people. I thank you with all the effusion of 
my soul, and I pray you to transmit to those who have made you the 
organ of their feelings the assurance of my ardent gratitude. 

“ ‘ The breath of my native air, so dear to the exile, bears to me 
only the echo of the volleys by which are shot down day by day 
the obscure and faithful victims of their loyalty—only the crackling 
of the flames kindled by the barbarous invader, the lamentations of 
the wretched prisoners, the cries of the farmers whose lands are 
overrun by the Draconian bands of Piedmontese Prefects. 

“ ‘ Taxes are multiplied, the property of the Church is usurped and 
sold, all the wealth accumulated by a wise system of economy is 
dissipated, and the treasury of the usurpation is always exhausted. 
The budget presents a frightful normal deficit, and the revenue 
scarcely exceeds half the amount which it reached during the last 
years of our independent monarchy. 

11 < When I see the most numerous and considerable section of the 
nobility of the kingdom condemn themselves to ostracism, for their 
espousal of my cause ; when, with the rarest exceptions, those who 
remain abstain from associating themselves in any way whatever 
with the usurpation ; when, from every commune in the kingdom, 
landowners and peasants offer me their services and their lives ; 
when I contemplate that noble people, abandoned by all, without 
any aid, and wholly uninstigated by me (you know it), fighting 
against foreign oppression, and dying in pronouncing my name— 
then, I say to myself, a cause thus founded upon justice and rooted 
in so many loyal hearts cannot fail, and to it the future belongs.’ ” 

Even the Times (1860) cannot help awarding a niggardly and 


364 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


ungracious tribute to the dethroned and exiled monarch:—“ It is but 
fair to confess, that the King’s subsequent conduct has, in some 
degree, belied his reputation. If he has given no proof of strategical 
or administrative capacity, and has alienated some waverers by his 
impolitic implacability, he has shown that he can stand at bay man¬ 
fully, and has the respectable quality of not knowing when he is 
beaten. He has exhibited, for a Bourbon (?), considerable virtues. 
He has shown more regard for the personal convenience and safety of 
others than for his own. He has sent away, not only his stud and 
his jewels, but his mother and his wife.” In a dignified State 
paper, issued at Gaeta, it is stated, “ that the enemy were repulsed 
in their attacks, and driven from their positions. The Boyal princes 
exposed their precious lives to danger on the fields of battle, where 
the victories of their enemies were celebrated. The King himself 
was among the foremost of the combatants, and saw fall at his side 
the martyrs who immolated themselves for the sacred cause. The 
revolution was checked and confused by it; the faithful people, who 
impatiently suffered their tyrannical yoke, began to be agitated, and 
everything presaged the triumphant return of the legitimate King to 
his capital, when another sovereign, perjured and disloyal , at the head 
of a powerful army, suddenly invades the States of the King, in 
order to show, to the whole of Europe, that the revolution was his 
work, and that he would not lose the shameful fruit of it.” 

The Duchess of Parma is, I believe, not less “beloved and longed 
for,” in the dominions of her son :— 

“The Duchess-Begent of Parma has protested, in the following 
terms, against the usurpation of the title of King of Italy by Victor 
Emmanuel:— 

“ ‘We, Louise Maria de Bourbon, Eegent of the States of Parma 
for Duke Bobert I.— 

“ ‘ By our declarations, dated Saint Gall, the 20th June, 1859, and 
Zurich, the 20th March, 1860, we protested against the usurpation 
of the States of our well-beloved son Duke Bobert I.—usurpation 
committed by the Government of the King of Sardinia, and which it 
has been sought to make believed as being brought about by the free 
vote of the people. 

“ ‘ That usurpation having extended to almost the whole of the 
Italian Peninsula, the King of Sardinia has taken the title of King 
of Italy. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONARARTES ? 


365 


“ ‘ Against this last act, which confirms all the usurpations which 
have been effected in the short space of about two years, to the 
detriment of the legitimate Sovereigns of Italy, and which has again 
injured the sovereign rights of our son, an Italian Prince, we have 
the duty to protest, as we do solemnly protest, thus making a fresh 
appeal to the sentiments of justice of the friendly Powers, who cer¬ 
tainly cannot see with an indifferent oye these repeated outrages on 
the faith of treaties* 

“ ‘Chateau of Wartegg, in Switzerland, this 10th day of April, 
1861. “ ‘ Louise.’ ” 

When Prancis II., accompanied by his magnanimous consort, 
quitted Gaeta, he might well exclaim 

Je songe quelle etait jusqu’ici cette ville, 

Si superbe en remparts, en heros si fertile, 

Loyale et devouee ; et je regarde enfin 

Q,uel fut son heureux sort, et quel est son destin. 

Je ne vois que des tours que la cendre a couvertes, 

Un fleuve teint de sang, des campagnes desertes. 
***** 

Laissez venir Victor— il verra son ouvrage. 

Racine. 

The following noble and touching letter, to which thousands of 
signatures might have been adhibited, would probably be sneered at 
by the votaries of a vulgar and vicious Liberalism :—“ The right of 
the King, my master, is not less sacred, now that he is no longer at 
Gaeta, than whilst he was there. I shall prove to Europe, that, if 
the King has been basely betrayed and abandoned by some of his 
servants, when he might have been saved, there are other servants, 
who maintain towards him their devotedness and fidelity after his 
august misfortune, and when efforts to save him might be fruitless.” 
The faithful adherents of the King may well maintain that the policy 
of the sovereigns, who abandoned him, was as blundering as it was 
base. The Austrian Emperor allowed his relative and friend to be 
deprived of his entire dominions, without attempting to succour and 
defend him, although perfectly aware that the Neapolitan resources 
will, under the new regime , be ere long employed against himself. 
He is like a chess-player, who allows one piece after another to be 
taken, and seems to suppose, that, in consequence of his losses (which 
he might have prevented), he is all the more likely to win the 


366 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


game. The rat in La Fontaine’s inimitable fable sets a precedent, 
which the Cabinet of Vienna has very exactly imitated. When the 
Neapolitan Ambassadors arrived at that capital, we may suppose 
them announcing, that— 

% Gatopolis etait bloquee, 

On les avait contraints <Ie partir sans argent, 

Attendu l’etat indigent, 

De la monarchic attaquee. 

Ils esperaient, qu’un prompt et genereux secours 
Serait pret dans quatre on cinq jours. 

“ Ha ! ” dit l’Empereur debonnaire, 

“ Les cboses de la bas ne me regardent plus. 

En quoi peut un Prince reclus 
Nous assister ? que peut-il faire ? 

Je vais prier le ciel, qu’il vous aide en ceci. 

J’espere, qu’il aura de vous quelque souci.” 

Ayant parle de cette sorte, 

Le monarque ferma sa porte. 

“ Most of the Neapolitans in the city were waiting to receive the 
ex-Queen at the station, and received her with acclamations. The 
ladies presented the unfortunate Princess with bouquets, while the 
gentlemen accompanied the cortege with torches as far as the Porta 
Portese, where they separated. About sixty carriages followed that 
which was occupied by the ex-Queen, and some of the Neapolitans, 
it is said, wanted to take out the horses and place themselves in the 
shafts. ”— Times. 

“ The hon. baronet attributed our detestation of the late dynasty 
in Naples to calumnies in the English press, and to the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer’s pamphlet on the Neapolitan prisons. He could 
state positively, that the right hon. gentleman took no trouble what¬ 
ever to ascertain the truth on that subject from official sources. 
When he went to Naples, he was surrounded by enemies of the 
King, and from them he obtained his fictions about the conditions of 
the prisons. But in a second pamphlet, the right hon. gentleman 
was compelled to retract his chief gravamen against the Government 
of King Ferdinand. Nevertheless, by the original pamphlet, the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer acquired a considerable amount of 
political capital. The House ought to know that several members 
of the Piedmontese Chambers, who could not be suspected of 
reactionist tendencies, had said that the present state of Naples was 


I 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 367 

infinitely worse than its state in the time of Ferdinand II.” — Sir 
George Bowyer. 

Whatever may have been the faults imputed to Francis II., I 
have never heard him accused of being numbered amongst the 
monarchs, by pandering to whose passions unworthy minions have 
acquired both pelf and pre-eminence. 

Leurs l&cbes favoris, et leurs vils emissaires 
Jusque dans nos bameaux, sous nos toils solitaires, 

Pour la se’eluire, amis, vont cbercher la bcaute— 

Ils vont d’un faux eclat flatter sa vanite; 

Ils l’enlevent des bras d’une mere abusee— 

Et, bientot avec faste au public exposee, 

Ils se font de leur crime un merite odieux— 

Tin brillant desbonneur leur parait glorieux— 

Plus la jeune victime est innocente et belle, 

Plus leur eoeur s’applaudit d’avoir triomphe d’elle— 

Enfin si tu savais par quels moyens bonteux 

Ils trompent des beautes, qui n’etaient pas pour eux, 

Par combien de presens, de soins et de souplesses 
Ils savent tot ou tard surprendre leurs faiblesses, 

Tu rougerais, ami; tu serais indigne— 

L’bumanite, l’bonneur . . . . il n’est rien d’epargnc. 

CoLARDEATT. 


IX .—Neapolitan Discontent and Piedmontese Cruelties . 

If I were writing to any resident at Naples, and asking him to 
secure a house for me, St. Paul would furnish me with an appro¬ 
priate exordium: “I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you 
such as I would, ; lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, stripes, 
backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults” (2 Cor. xii. 20). This 
picture of the existing state of matters is fully borne out by the 
subjoined collection of passages from the Times, and other Liberal 
papers, which were chiefly extracted in 1861 and 1862. The French 
quotations were cut out of a respectable Brussels journal. 

Many provinces of the Peninsula, besides Naples and Sicily, have 



368 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAFARTES ? 


but too mucb cause to ask tbeir stern and shallow liberators the 
mournful question, “Where is the blessedness ye spake of?” and 
especially the disappointed and disgusted inhabitants of the cities, in 
which the exiled Princes maintained a generous and munificent 
hospitality, besides being the foremost, on all occasions, to promote 
the welfare, and redress the grievances, of their attached and faithful 
subjects, the wisest and worthiest of whom were overawed and over¬ 
powered by the suborned and sordid hirelings of an ambitious and 
unscrupulous neighbour and relative, against whom they took no 
precautions, because they harboured no suspicions. 

“The Italian patriots of every class, with but rare exceptions, on 
the morrow of a political movement, seem only busy with the inquiry, 

‘ What will the new liberty bring forward for ourselves ? ’ They do 

NOT LOOK UPON FREEDOM AS AN END, BUT AS A MEANS. 

Ognun ricerca a gara 
Del re la grazia un modi mille ; ognuno 
Util vuol farsi al re. 

Alfieri. 

These men appear to have drawn on an infinity of money and 
power, involved in the single idea of Italian unity. Naples and 
Sicily, and every service, and every class of Liberals, and every in¬ 
dividual, were to be suddenly enriched by the charm.‘ The 

martyrs, whose messengers we are,’ said the martyr-spokesman, ‘ ask 
for a place in the Government, every man a place, but a lucrative 
one, and without delay.’ Here, in these few instances, which I 
could multiply to infinity, you have the seed of those social disorders, 
with which Italy is threatened: first, an inordinate thirst for public 
offices, or rather for public sinecures ; a jealous, snarling expectation 
in every locality, that Government should do everything for its own 
special benefit, regardless of all the principles of common justice 
and economy, and wrathfully denunciating every measure, which, 
however inevitably, or only apparently, he deemed detrimental even 
to the pettiest local interest; finally, a lively envy, on the part of 
the poor, of those placed in better conditions, as if a society could 
be created or imagined, in which rich and poor, hard-working and 
easy-living classes, were not eternally destined to live side by side, 
equally essential and useful to the utmost welfare of one another.” 
— Times. 



\ 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 3G9 

“Addresses, offering* the crown of Naples to Prince Lucien Murat, 

are freely circulating in Naples. There is no French party at 

Naples; but some are of opinion, that French agents are at work 
here, and that out of the many materials for discontent , which must 
necessarily exist in this recently revolutionised country, it would not 

be difficult to rally some of them round any banner.Perhaps 

the Emperor himself does not well know how to get out of this diffi¬ 
cult position, in which his tortuous policy has placed him.”— Times. 

Thus we see, that the establishment of a Bonapartist dynasty at 
Naples, d la mode de V Homme de Brumaire, is the unceasing, the 
unavowed object of the Man of December’s insatiable ambition. 

“ ‘ Malcontent is general. The country people are beggared by 
brigandage. The artisans lack work, and have the dearth of pro¬ 
visions to contend with. Commercial men are ruined by a stagnation 
in trade, consequent upon the lowered tariff. The ex-Bourbon 
officers and the Graribaldians are so badly off, that it is a perfect 
wonder they do not join the brigands.’ Here the orator was assailed 
by stormy voices from men of his own provinces and party, and 
warned by the President that the discussion of the affairs of Naples 
is put off to a better opportunity. ‘ Artists and cultivators of liberal 
professions,’ he continued, ‘ are in misery. The Neapolitan employds } 
or placemen, complain that they are liable, at a moment’s notice, to 
be removed from one province into another; to leave Naples for 
Turin is perfectly terrific to them, for they look upon Piedmont as 
the Poles do upon Siberia. I have run over most provinces, and do 
you know how people live there ? Why, no one dares to leave 
home, fearing to fall into the hands of brigands. Those who fall 
into such hands, and have to ransom themselves, dare not complain, 
lest their harvests be burnt, their cattle slaughtered. All this 
because military authorities fall short of their duty, and civil autho¬ 
rities are utterly unfit for theirs. Without great energy on the part of 
the population (that population which dares never to put their noses 
out of their houses), the country would by this time be utterly 
desolate. The war-tax,’ the orator goes on, ‘ will work a very 
unfavourable impression among such a population. It must be put 
off to a better opportunity, otherwise, when spring comes, and with 
it war, you will have to garrison Naples with 50,000 men, and these 
will be so many combatants taken from the national ranks.’ ” 

A A 




370 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


“The King’s Government is not beloved in that part of the 
country. They endeavoured to prevail by main force; but force, 
like a frail reed, broke in their hands. He spoke of the Italian army 
in terms of the greatest eulogy ; but insinuated, with the most con¬ 
summate skill, that the attempted repression of brigandage had been 
accompanied by deeds of great ferocity ; he drew a fearful picture of 
Pontelandolfo, a place which he visited on the very morrow after the 
severe military execution, which had ravaged it with fire and sword. 
With all these horrors, he concluded, public security is very far from 
being re-established in that neighbourhood. The defenceless popu¬ 
lation are flocking in dismay to the capital.” 

“ The brigands that infest the Neapolitan territory have not yet 
been exterminated, though it would be unjust to accuse the various 
generals, who have been employed in the task, of negligence or 
of weakness. The ferocities of these brigands have drawn forth 
reprisals, but still without success. The moment the brigands are 
driven from one position, they reappear in another, when they are 
least expected; and the Spanish adventurer Borges, the former 
lieutenant of Cabrera in Catalonia and Valencia, though he has 
often been taken prisoner and shot, still survives. The Italian 
Government will complete the pacification of the country some day 
or other, as the French Government did that of La Vendee, after a 
protracted struggle and chastisement, quite as severe, if not more so, 
than that inflicted by the Piedmontese.” 

“A wearisome and a painful task is it to report the acts of 
brigandage which desolate Southern Italy and fill so many districts 
with consternation; yet it is only by keeping them before the world 
that public opinion can be strengthened and brought to bear on 
those who are the real authors of this lamentable state of things. 
In a few words it would be possible to give you an outline of the 
barbarities committed in various directions during this month— 
rapes, murders, robberies, incendiarism will tell the tale.”— Times. 

“ Naples itself is quiet, though deeds of violence take place, which 
show the great disorganisation of society, and attempts to collect 
arms have been discovered within the last few days which compro¬ 
mise some persons of distinction. We are continually told, that the 
risings in the Basilicata and elsewhere are suppressed, but the truth 
is, that though the bands may be dispersed, and, after deeds of 
butchery, military executions take place constantly, portions of them 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 371 

escape, and rally again in some other direction. A kind of extended 
guerilla warfare is carried on, though, if it were not for the impulse 
which it receives from foreign agency, it would cease altogether and 
I repeat that, so long as Francis II. is in Home, and home under 
the kind and impartial protection of the French, there is little hope 
of tranquillity.” 

1 £ The women of the place, forgetting their sex, acted like furies, 
and assisted in every excess that was committed. Such is another 
lamentable episode in the history of the Italian revolution, and, 
before it is concluded, we shall have many others of a similar kind, 
I fear. It is highly probable, that much that is taking place might 
have been prevented by a more prudent system of government, and 
that if there had been more real action, and fewer promises and 
decrees, society would not be, as it is, tumbling to pieces; but let 
that rest, while I point to barbarities which were worthy of savages, 
or of men who had been reared under the priests and Bourbons.”— 
Times. 

“ M. Bellazzi, a deputy of the extreme Left, lately elected, gave a 
fearful description of the state of the prisons at Genoa, where, he 
said, the cellular or solitary confinement system has not yet been 
introduced, in spite of the law voted in 1857 ; where 5.00 persons are 
crammed together in a space insufficient for 300 ; and where no dis¬ 
tinction is made between obdurate old villains and young beginners 
in crime, between political prisoners and persons guilty of revolting 
and degrading offences, and between women of good morals and 
common prostitutes. The orator dwelt at still greater length on the 
horrors of some of the Southern prisons, especially those of Milazzo, 
in Sicily.”— II. 

(C The Government is beating about for recruits, and the population, 
especially in the rural districts, eludes or even openly resists the 
conscription. In the Apennines of the ex-Duchies and Bomagna 
are hundreds of young runaways, who are now only absconding, but 
whom wamt and evil suggestions will too probably, in course of time, 
turn into brigands. On the other hand, not a few of the conscripts 
desert and cross over to the Austrians, swelling the ranks of the 
battalions still under the allegiance of Francis V. of Austria-Este. 
The late levies have by no means strengthened the army.”— II. 

“"What a state of things, when thieves do not respect even 
ex-Ministers! Despite, however, of one or two other robberies, 

A a 2 


372 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 

public security is greater than it was. Still much remains to be 
done, and the additional number of 1,000 Guards of Public Security 
for tbe whole of Italy, recently ordered at Turin, is rather ridiculous 
than useful.”— Times. 

“ Skirmishes continue in various parts between the troops and the 
banditti, who, though reduced in numbers, still create disquietude. 
In that which took place a few days since at Nola, there were many 
wounded on both sides, and two soldiers and an officer are reported 
dead. Of the loss of the brigades nothing is known.”— lb. 

“ A party of the worst marauders were surrounded in a grotto, in 
the territory of Melffi, and three of them were either burnt alive or 
stifled by the peasantry, who bloched up the entrance of the cavern with 
fire. They had a vast amount of booty with them, and a cartload of 
valuable property was conveyed to Melfi. Everywhere—in the fields, 
along the roads—one falls in with the bodies of slain brigands, 
who are fallen upon by the exasperated peasantry with axes and 
scythes, and despatched thus summarily, as they endeavour to make 
good their escape. The National Guards take a very active part in 
this destructive pursuit.” 

“The chief difficulty is the wretched condition of the Neapolitan 
provinces. It is certainly to be regretted that Cialdini was recalled. 
He was doing his work well, and no one can say how far his suc¬ 
cessor is equal to the same duties. Moreover, the frequent changes, 
and the trial of a series of administrators—Farini, Nigra, San 
Martino, Cialdini, and Della Marmora—must have had a bad effect 
on the population, which will persuade themselves that they are not 
to be governed, since so many have tried to govern them in vain.” 

“ Undoubtedly there is much to regret in Naples and Sicily. 
There is a police accustomed to act as the police is bred up to act in 
the greater part of the Continent. There are hurried and unjust 
seizures of persons suspected of political offences. The prisons are unfor¬ 
tunately full , and more than full. It is hard to get a trial, and officials 
are corrupt, tyrannical, and servile. Pome was not built, and Naples 
has not been purified, in a day. The Government has to protect 
itself, and to secure the first of objects—its own existence. It has to 
govern Southern Italians by the aid of officials from Northern Italy.” 
—Saturday Review. 

“ On visiting the prisons, Lord H. Lennox witnessed terrible 
sights. Men confined for political offences and debtors were com- 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 373 

polled to herd with felons. Numbers of women are placed in durance 
vile, on account of their political sympathies, and three unhappy 
sisters had been confined twenty-two months, for the grave offence of 
having hung a wet sheet, mistaken by obsequious officials for a 
Bourbon flag, from their window to dry. Nor was this the worst 
feature of the story. Ladies of good family and high character, 
arrested on suspicion, are compelled to associate with the lowest class 
of women. The food of the poor prisoners, many of whom were in a 
state of nudity, is described as being of the worst description.’’— 
Press. 

“In the prison of Santa Maria, Lord H. Lennox found eighty- 
three political prisoners, some of whom had been there three years, 
all without trial, most without examination. In other prisons he 
found priests, gentlemen who had been arrested on suspicion of dis¬ 
loyalty, confined in the same crowded squalid wards with homicides 
and felons; in another, three sisters—whose offence at the worst 
was the exhibition of a white flag—compelled to associate with 
women taken from the streets. In the prison of Salerno, built for 
nine hundred prisoners, there were more than thirteen hundred— 
many of them Garibaldians, crowded in extreme wretchedness with 
common criminals. In another prison, twelve hundred prisoners 
were confined—and the political prisoners were literally chained to 
brigands and homicides.”— lb. 

u For the last month or so the celebrated company of San Carlino 
have been performing at the Teatro Caprinica, in Borne, to the great 
delight of Francesco and his followers, who have naturally a great 
taste for the pure Neapolitan, and as pure jokes of Pulcinello. The 
ex-King and this shadow of a Court were frequent attendants at the 
performance ; and Pulcinello, like most jokers, it is said, sacrificed 
his former friends for the sake of amusing ex-Boyalty. The mere 
fact of the company having gone to Borne at all, where their dialect 
could give gratification only to the exiles, created great displeasure 
here; but some broad jokes about the “ Galantuomo' > ' > excited the people to 
fury , and vengeance was vowed. Their re-appearance after their visit 
was announced for Tuesday evening, and there was some intention 
on the part of the Quiestura to prohibit the performance, in con¬ 
sequence of the threats that were uttered; but precautions were 
taken, and the doors were opened. As soon as the curtain rose, and 
the actors came on the stage, the skirmish began; from all parts of 


374 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


the pit large stones , some two pounds in weight , lemons , and various other 
missiles , were hurled at poor Punch and his friends , and, as tliis con¬ 
tinued for some time, the Carabiniers entered to restore order.”— 
Press. 

“ There must be many families at Naples who regret the system 
which has passed away. The Court must have employed a vast 
number of tradesmen, who found a cessation to their gains in the 

absence of Francis and his followers. From various motives, there 

must he a great crowd in Naples ivho regret the past, and fear the future .” 
—Ih. 

“It seems impossible that Italy should at present become really 
independent.’’— Saturday Review. 

“ She is placed in a position in which she must necessarily show 
considerable deference to the views and wishes of France, and she is 
pledged to hostility against Austria, with which country she cannot 
cope single-handed.”— Speech in Parliament. 

“Every month makes it more and more plain that all the efforts 
of the Loyalist faction, though seconded by the Papal Court and 
connived at by the Government of France, will fail in producing 
anything more than local disorder in the Italian kingdom.” 

I may here remark, that the partisans of the ancient order 
of things are completely “ at one ” in their principles and pro¬ 
jects. Neither they nor their sovereigns cherish any desire for 
annexations or aggrandisement. The Duke of Modena has no wish 
to obtain possession of Naples, nor the King of Naples to seize 
Tuscany, or even to subdue Piedmont. They would probably be 
glad to see Lombardy restored to Austria. In fact, they consider 
that province as still do jure subject to the Austrian sceptre, inas¬ 
much as it was only ceded to France by the Treaty of Villafranca, 
on condition that the exiled princes should be restored. It was at 
least as necessary that this stipulation should be complied with, as 
that the payment of a proportion of the Austrian debt should be 
undertaken by Piedmont. 

“The Piedmontese Government admitted that in Southern Italy 
they had shot 7,000 men without trial, and that sixteen towns had 
been burned, sacked, and almost entirely destroyed by the troops, 
for manifestations in favour of the Bourbons. These facts stood 
recorded by the Piedmontese Government itself.”— House of Commons. 



I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 375 

“ Nor am I sufficiently enamoured of political inconsistency to 
agree with those who rejoice at the overthrow of despotism in 
Naples, and yet assist in the bolstering up of the far more terrible 
despotism of Turkey.”— Rev. W. Renton. 

“It would be agreeable if, on the turn of the seasons, I could 
speak with any satisfaction of our prospects at Naples for the 
winter, but even the most sanguine would find it impossible to do so 
if they spoke honestly.” 

“ There is universal discontent and murmuring here. The merchants 
complain that there is no commerce; the poor, that bread is dear; 
the crowds who depend for existence on the influx of sovereigns and 
napoleons, that there are no foreigners; the autonomists, that they 
are shorn of their national glories and governed by prefects; and 
people are busily at work to foment discord and dissatisfaction.” 

“Public security is almost every where seriously menaced. To say 
nothing of the many-headed monster of Neapolitan brigandage, of 
the cold-blooded murder of three officers of the Milanese Regiment 
of Lancers at Foggia, and of the tragic scenes at Bologna and in 
Romagna, there seems to be a belief that the police authorities are 
in many districts both corrupt and slack, and the rabble have their 
own way to an undesirable extent.” 

“ The situation of Southern Italy is indeed most distressing. The 
horrors which are witnessed in the late Kingdom of the Two Sicilies are 
beyond belief. Our readers have the letters of our correspondents at 
Turin and Naples, and may judge of the evil from the serious tone 
in which it is described.” 

“In Frascattori, Masera, and five other places, the National 
Guard had been deprived of their arms by the Reactionists. Of the 
fact of men who were declared Liberals, being taken out and shot, 
as of Signor Coccia in Agerola, I think it scarcely worth while to 
speak. They are some of those trifles which serve to fill up the 
picture. Then the demands for money have been enormous, and the 
vengeance inflicted, where refused, has been terrible. Six thousand 
ducats are asked for in one place, and not forthcoming, 20 cows and 
500 goats are burnt. Then of course there are retaliations, for 
unhappily men are but men, and we hear of a horde of rebels being 
burnt out of a forest near Monteverde. Three thousand trees , it is 
said , were set on fire, and not one of the band escaped the fire or sword , or 
arrest. I confine myself almost exclusively to official information, 


376 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


and doing so I can scarcely be accused of exaggeration if I speak of 
the civil war wliicb still exists as most barbarous in its character, 
and full of peril, not merely for its present, but remote consequences. 
Animosities and vindictive feelings have been awakened, which it will 
take many generations to calm down A 

“The position becomes graver everyday, and, though I would 
willingly send you pleasant reports, yet I must confine myself 
strictly to facts, and these are such as to awaken much anxiety for 
the future of the country. Divided counsels in the city, and a want 
of support on the part of the central Grovernment to those whom it 
charges with the government of this province, are among some of 
the first evils to be complained of.” 

‘ ‘ A sharp skirmish ensued, and the brigands defended themselves 
with desperation. At last, after half an hour’s firing, I summoned 
them to surrender, threatening to burn the house down; they obsti¬ 
nately refused, and wishing to spare as much as possible the lives of 
my brave Bides, I ivas already applying fire to the Cascina, when the 
brigands surrendered at discretion .” 

“Very serious complaints are made, also, not merely here, but 
throughout all the newly annexed provinces, of the stiffness and 
asperity of manner, of the overhearing and scornful demeanour of 
Piedmontese officials. No doubt there may he some ground for the charge. 
The Italians, especially in the Central and Southern provinces, were 
accustomed to bland and smooth, however in reality lax and 
unprincipled rulers. Favouritism and venality were injurious to 
many, but sent away a few well pleased and satisfied. The Pied¬ 
montese comes among these new subjects with his iron rule of strict 
honesty and impartiality.” 

‘ ‘ Brigandage is still rampant in Italy, the utmost efforts of the 
troops of the King Victor Emmanuel being insufficient to keep down 
a plague fostered by the Pope and the ex-King Francis. It is most 
discouraging to the new Kingdom of Italy to have a centre of 
disorder and disaffection maintained in her chief city; but her 
vigorous exertions to extinguish the robber rebels show that she is 
determined to be mistress of herself in spite of the enemies of her 
own household no less than of her foes without. It is extremely 
desirable, however, that the Emperor of the French should speedily 
fulfil the promise he is said to have given, to have one at least of the 
propagators of brigandage removed from the Holy City.” 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ?’ 377 

“ A recent paper rated up all the deeds of blood chronicled in 
the journals of the whole Peninsula, with the title 1 A Single Day of 
Italian History.’ It mentions a burglary attended with the atro¬ 
cious murder of a woman and child, at Milan, on the 31st of Decem¬ 
ber ; an attempt at burglary by eight thieves at the octroi-house 
near the Frediano gate at Florence, on Christmas eve; the murder 
of a canon, also at Florence, near the Cathedral, at five o’clock 
on the morning of the 29th, perpetrated by robbers; a high¬ 
way robbery by three malefactors near Porta San Gallo, also at 
Florence, on the 25th; two burglaries in the same city, within a few 
days; an attack in the streets of the same town upon an English 
lady, who put the robbers to rout by producing a revolver, &c. 
Proceeding then to the Southern Provinces, the Campanile has a 
long string of thefts, at Naples, Mola, and Pozzuolo, a dreadful 
massacre of three persons near Oria, the attack on two diligences at 
Bovino and Mugnano, &c.” 

“ So great was the terror of the inhabitants, and the discontent at 
the weakness of the Executive power which could tolerate such a 
state of things, that it was thought it might cost the Government a 
defeat on the vote of confidence.” 

“Now that they have driven out their oppressors, and have got 
that unity for which they clamoured, they feel that it means something 
very different from what they expected , and are mortified and hurt 
beyond all expression at being let down so low and so rapidly. I 
must observe, however, that the real state of the provinces is little 
known ; information is often suppressed , and hence the press is left to 
indulge in conjecture, and exaggerates from the very uncommunica¬ 
tiveness of the Government.” 

“Italian diplomacy, up to this moment, continues to be, in the 
main, the old Piedmontese diplomacy. There are not many instances 
of subjects from the newly annexed provinces being as yet employed 
in this service. The old Ministers and Charges d’Affaires of 
Tuscany or Naples have either been pensioned off, or withhold 
their countenance from the present state of things, and cling to the 
banished remnants of their lawful dynasties. Even their tender of 
services would be received with mistrust, and their appointment, 
were it ventured on, would wound popular susceptibilities.” 

“ Italian freedom will have to cut its way through the carcases of 
all these desperate characters; such incorrigible wretches will have 


378 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


to be bunted out of tbeir haunts on the hill and in the bush; they 
will have to be singled out in the purlieus of suburban vice and 
depravity; it will take no stint of rope to hang them; no mercy in 
casting them back into the bagnios out of which unprincipled 
despotism or unthinking liberalism let them loose.” 

“The passion for independence, which possesses not only the 
Neapolitans but the principalities of Central Italy, is growing in 
strength, and the days of Piedmontese domination in Italy are 
numbered.” . 

“Hitherto this province has been represented to me by the 
authorities as being quiet, but the truth is out now, and I find that 
there, as elsewhere, the panic and disturbances exist .”—Saturday 
Review. 

“Italians must stir themselves if they do not mean to be swept 
into the abyss of debt, humiliation, and intestine divisions.”— lb. 

11 The policy of the Government which has most humbled and 
indisposed the Neapolitans is the little account in which, they have 
been held; the slights to which they have been exposed. They 
constitute one-third of the State; they bear their own portion of the 
public burdens, but they are excluded from their due share of public 
officers.” 

“Obviously, the malefactors of Bologna must be dealt with in 
some summary manner.” 

“The news of Neapolitan brigandage is truly distressing, but it 
is not destitute of a certain interest.” 

“Brigandage is increasing in the province of Basilicata, and the 
brigands are now concentrating their force for a great effort. Some 
brigand chiefs, bearing important papers, have been shot.” 

“With regard to Sicily, I hear that the sensitiveness of the people 
is as great, if not greater, than that of the Neapolitans.” 

“ In a paper supposed to act under the inspiration of Her Majesty’s 
Government, the Observer, of last Sunday, there was a letter signed 
by a prisoner taken at Aspromonte, in which it was stated that 
nearly 100 Garibaldians were now immured in prison at Palermo, 
almost in a state of nudity, and with chains of 18 lb. weight attached to 
their feet. Condemned to death for being found under the banner of 
Garibaldi, the sentence of these men had been commuted to the 
galleys.” 

‘ 1 1 mention these facts to show that the conspiracy was widely 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 379 

spread throughout the various districts near Naples, and the clergy- 
had cognizance of it. It would occupy much space to detail all 
the disturbances which occurred in various districts, and the 
daring acts of violence committed in the capital; but, taken 
altogether, they are proofs that a general and widely" diffused under¬ 
standing existed between the adherents of the Bourbons, and that 
something on a larger scale might be apprehended.” 

“The idea of Italian unity, like most other ideas, does not 
correspond very well with the facts. Naples regrets its Court , and its 
hot blood is chilled by the cold Piedmontese. The Southern Provinces 
feel themselves an appanage to the Sardinian Crown, and are 
indignant at the subordination. Even the smaller Duchies cannot 
forget that they were Duchies; and Elorence, Bologna, and Milan 
still have their local sympathies and pride of independence. These 
natural feelings of division are increased tenfold by the presence of 
an alien force in the most important city of the Peninsula, and every 
element of disaffection, and every impulse of disunion are fostered 
and increased by the moral and political malaria which spreads from 
the unhealthy atmosphere of Pome.”— Times. 

“Italian statesmen must make up their minds that they are only 
just beginning to meet the real difficulties of their position. If they 
cry off at the first discouragement, they are not of the stuff which 
has made kingdoms.” 

“ The financial position of Italy may be summed up in a very few 
words. She has just contracted a new debt of forty millions sterling, 
for which she will get twenty-eight millions in cash. This loan will do 
very little, if anything, more than enable her to balance her revenue 
and her expenditure up to the end of the present year. Her present 
deficit is little short of twelve millions a year, and after this year 
there will be the additional interest on the new loan.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“ There is slight chance that in four years the revenue will balance 
the expenditure, unless something much more efficacious is done 
than to make a slight increase in the taxation and sell the public 
property.”— lb. 

1 ‘ There are things to complain of in Italy, and abuses of authority 
which ought not to be tolerated where there is a free press and 
Parliament.— lb. 

“ One prisoner, who spoke French fluently, told him that though 


380 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


it appeared he was suspected of being concerned in some revolu¬ 
tionary proceedings, he had been nineteen months in his cell with¬ 
out having been tried or even interrogated.” 

“Then Bixio rose, who, as was well known, had been a 
Garibaldian general, and who from his great knowledge was 
appointed by the Italian Government as a member of the commission 
to inquire into the question of brigandage, and he said that a system 
of blood had been established in the South of Italy which ho 
regretted, because if Italy was to become a nation it could not be by 
shedding blood.” 

“ The number of persons who had been condemned to the galleys 
was 32,000, and the number of political prisoners in the kingdom of 
the Two Sicilies 70,000: he was speaking from official documents. 
No wonder that the prisons were crowded.” 

“ One of the great complaints of the right hon. gentleman was 
that there were 20,000 and more prisoners confined at Naples. 
What did they find to be the case now, as stated by deputies in the 
Parliament at Turin? That there were 1,300 prisoners confined at 
Palermo; that at Salerno the prison, which was built for 600, con¬ 
tained 1,400; and that at Lucignano 700 were confined in a prison 
built for 200. If these facts had come to the knowledge of the right 
hon. gentleman, he could hardly conceive how the right hon. gentle¬ 
man could remain silent.” 

“Among the prisoners was a Poman Catholic bishop and five 
priests, who had been dragged out of their beds a month before, 
thrust into this prison, and made to associate with needy debtors and 
convicted felons, without knowing why and wherefore ! Some hon. 
gentlemen around him would not sympathise much, perhaps, with 
Roman Catholic bishops and priests, but they were sufficiently 
Englishmen to sympathise with any one who was treated unjustly, 
whether priest or layman. Mixed up with the rest was another man 
who had been in prison nearly two years—22 months. He was an 
old man. He must have been close upon 70. He was bowed with 
years, and was confined to the prison diet—one meal a day, and 
nothing but water to drink. He complained, but he said he thought 
the end was near.” 

“He found the press subject to a censorship of the severest and 
most galling description. Every number of a newspaper had to be 
submitted before publication to an official who had the right to for- 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONATARTES ? 381 

bid its appearance without being 1 liable to legal process, Tho 
Ministry had just issued to the perfects a circular enjoining ‘constant 
and energetic surveillance ’ of political writers. One paper had been 
seized four times in nine days, and the editor fined and imprisoned. 
Another had been seized twenty-four times; and its editor had 
already suffered two years’ imprisonment. Half a dozen similar 
instances illustrated the liberty of the press which Mr. Layard had 
so superfluously praised. The offences of the condemned journals 
consisted chiefly in republishing extracts—-in one case, from a speech 
of the Marquis of Normanby’s, in another, from the writings of their 
own Minister Farini.” 

“Among the prisoners in the first cell which he entered in this 
prison were eight or nine priests and fourteen laymen, all suspected 
of political offences, and they were shoved into this cell with ten or 
twelve convicted felons. In the next cell were 157 prisoners, the 
greater part of whom were untried. They lived here the whole day, 
they slept there the whole night, and, except for a very short period, 
when they were allowed to take a little exercise in a wretched yard, 
these 157 wretched creatures passed the whole of their lives in this 
place, without knowing why or wherefore they had been brought 
there.” 

“Under the Government of Victor Emmanuel in Naples neither 
life nor property is secure. Travellers cannot visit places of interest 
without running the risk of being captured by brigands and having 
to pay a heavy ransom. The prisons of Naples are full of political 
prisoners, some of them untried for periods varying from ten months 
to two years. He is inclined to think that the number of political 
prisoners was greater at the commencement of the present year than 
at any period during the reign of the Bourbons. Besides, he 
believes that many thousand persons have been put to death as 
brigands without trial in Southern Italy—put to death in cold blood, 
without trial, on suspicion that they were brigands. Universal 
discontent prevails in Southern Italy. The nobles and the clergy are 
intensely averse to the ‘Piedmontese usurpation.’ Mr. S. O’Brien 
cannot contradict those who assert that the people of Naples were 
happier under the Bourbon dynasty than they are now under the 
foot of Victor Emmanuel.” 

“If reliance may be placed on the information which reaches us 
from various quarters, the presence of the French becomes daily 


382 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


more irksome to the Romans, who are at no pains to conceal their 
disgust of the foreign bayonets by which the misery of their subjec- 
tion to priestly rule is indefinitely prolonged.” 

“The Official Gazette of Naples has become a register of cold¬ 
blooded murder, and its statements are now open to the charge of 
exaggeration, which might be advanced with an appearance of 
foundation against the Bourbonist press. The numbers are 
naturally pared down rather than increased to its own discredit, and 
yet within three weeks there are forty-three executions for political 
offences, if the hill-side fusillade of a reactionary peasantry, taken in 
some suspicious act, can be dignified with a name which implies 
something of judicial formality. A short shrift and a crack of the 
rifle, and all is over.” 

“The churches are in many places now added to the list of gaols, 
the ordinary prisons being insufficient to contain the reactionaries. 
At San Filo and Montalto two large churches have been lately con¬ 
verted to this novel use. At Catanzaro there are 600 political 
prisoners, all in the greatest misery; and as most of these are 
Liberals of Aspromonte there may be some chance of awakening 
that sympathy for them in the minds of the godfathers of Italian 
unity which is steadfastly refused to men whose sole crime is 
loyalty.” 

“It is intended to repeal many of the provisions, and correct 
many of the mistakes, of Ratazzi’s communal law of 1859, which 
forms a part of the frightful farrago of decrees issued by him in the 
October and November of that year, when the ‘ unlimited power ’ 
handed over by Parliament, with the sole intention of meeting the 
State’s pressing exigencies of war and finance, were made the means 
of violently forcing the laws and administrative usages of Piedmont, 
or rather of a Franco-Piedmontese Ratazzianism, on the newly- 
ceded provinces. Nine-tenths of the present business of Italian 
statesmanship is simply to endeavour to undo the mischief that then 
was done.” 

“Ask the Sicilians what they want—they will not venture to say 
that they would like to be all public functionaries at the expense of 
the State, to pay nothing towards the cost of free Government, but 
to enjoy all its benefits; to have Palermo the capital and Sicily the 
centre of Italy. Not venturing frankly to avow all this, they will 
simply say that the Government is not good ,”—Morning Star. 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


383 


“The difficulties in tlie way of Italian unity are immense, imme¬ 
morial, and deep-seated, in diversity of race and geographical pecu¬ 
liarities. They have been aggravated by the presence of a Spiritual 
Power, which has seated itself on the very spot most convenient for 
its old policy of ruling by division. By a rare combination of 
favouring circumstances, wonderful ability, and extraordinary 
courage, those difficulties have been so far surmounted, and we 
witness to-day what yesterday was the impossible dream of political 
fanatics.” 

“ The present Ministers were not the men to liberate Venice and 
Pome. They were good only to bear the moral kicks and cuffs of 
Prance, and to display the virtue of patience (in allusion to the 
proverb, “ patience is the donkey’s virtue ”). 

“ Count Arese’s mission has ended in compliments and fine words, 
assurances of sympathy, expressions of eternal interest in Italy, 
esteem and attachment for the King. That is all.” 

“ As soon as that military triumph shall be obtained, which is to 
take place, as I have said, on the 5th of next month, or on the 15th, 
which is the birthday of the Prince Imperial, the difficulties will 
begin on a grand scale, and then the General-in-Chief will have to 
display his great political talents and his material resources in men 
and money ; for without many millions there can be no war here on 
those who do not require millions in order to defend themselves.” 

“M. Monnier says that the perils which threaten Southern Italy 
arise neither from the Muratists, nor from the Autonomists, nor from 
the Federalists, nor from the Bourbonists, but from the bands of 
criminals whom the spirit of the reaction calls forth and pays. The 
war is not political, but social. Italy is fighting not merely for her 
rights and her ideas, but for the very existence of society against the 
elements of anarchy and dissolution, which foreign publicists mistake 
for a national movement of the Neapolitan population .”—Saturdaij 
Review. 

“It is the absence of all co-operation of the population with the 
armed force which frustrates all the efforts of this latter towards the 
maintenance of public peace.” 

“On Saturday a discussion on the horrors of Naples again gave 
rise to a storm of bitter invective and angry denunciation.” 

“With a fiendish glee and an effrontery worthy of priestly vin¬ 
dictiveness, the Armonia insults national grief by the enumeration of 


384 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


the various miscliances by which, the rulers of Italy have been with 
too rapid a succession laid low one after another. ‘ Cavour dead, 
Ivicasoli threatened with blindness ’ (the Baron is suffering from sore 
eyes), ‘ Ratazzi married, Farini crazy,—such is the account we have 
to give of the four Prime Ministers of the Italian kingdom in three 
years.’ Without sharing the malignant feelings which prompted 
these comments, and without assigning to the coincidence of so many 
private catastrophes such motives as the uncharitableness of that 
journal seeks in the dispensation of the All-Wise, we can hardly 
help being struck with the rapidity with which the Revolution in 
this as in all other countries contrives to devour its children. Truly, 
it is not popular fickleness or party alternation that most usually 
removes the great Italians from the helm of public affairs. It is 
merely overwork and the excessive intensity and anxiety of well- 
meaning endeavour.” 

“ The statement that the French Government has requested the 
contingent aid of an Italian army is both true and, at first sight, 
startling. There is nothing improbable in the further report that 
CO, 000 men are held in readiness to comply with the Imperial 
demand. ”—Saturday Review . 

* 1 If the proposed arrangement should take effect, the subordina¬ 
tion of Italy to France will recall the memory of the times in which 
Kings of Naples and Viceroys of Lombardy commanded divisions in 
the invading armies of the first Napoleon.”— lb. 

“ The tranquillity of Italy will not unfortunately be brought about 
by speeches in England or by the soldiers of King Victor Emmanuel, 
but, if at an early period, alone by the will of Napoleon III. All 
Italian evils are obviously to be found centred in Paris.” 

“ In the months of January, February, and March of the present 
year, 188 persons were shot in Piedmontese prisons for the crime of 
brigandage. Within the last two years some 7,000 persons more 
were shot after battle, killed in action, or sentenced to the galleys 
for the same crime. There are at this moment 18,000 political 
prisoners in Naples; and this, Mr. Layard assures us, is to be the 
normal state of things in the kingdom of Naples until, in the course 
of two or three generations, the Neapolitans have been purged 
of their evil habits of loyalty to their King and hatred to the 
foreigner.” 

“ The Liberals pretend that King Victor Emmanuel is thoroughly 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 385 

justified in governing without the slightest regard to law or equity 
the country which he annexed upon the pretence of rescuing it from 
oppression and illegality, and insist that the British Parliament has 
no business, because Italy is united, to discuss the condition of the 
Two Sicilies.”— Standard . 

“It was a most awful picture that the Minister drew of the state 
of the island, and the tone of his delivery showed that he spoke from 
conviction, and it carried conviction with it.” 

“ Mr. Bishop, who had resided in the kingdom of Naples some 
three years, was arrested at Mola di Gaeta on his way to Pome, 
nominally on the ground of an informality in his passport, really in 
consequence of a telegraphic order to arrest him received from 
Naples. He had been closely watched by spies for some time. He 
was treated with the utmost brutality by his captors, stripped and 
searched, abused and beaten, challenged to fight by one of the 
officers in command, detained two days subject to all kinds of insults 
and maltreatment, and then forwarded to Naples. There, being 
known, he was treated better, and might have obtained his release 
if the British consul would have asked it.” 

“This is the condition of Italy at the present moment; it was the 
condition of Italy last year, and it is one highly unsatisfactory, I 
believe, to the Italians as well as to England. They have been kept 
in a state of constant excitement and irritation from expectations 
held out by our Government through a course of policy being indi¬ 
cated by England, which England was never prepared to act upon, 
and which England was not justified in holding out without being 
prepared to act on it.” 

“ M. Plichon.—The sagacity and moderation of the Emperor at 
the begir.ning of his reign had deadened that mistrust, but the war 
of Italy, the non-execution of the peace of Villafranca, the complacence 
of the French Government for the Italian revolution , the application of 
principles to the organisation of Italy which are the negation of the 
law of dynastic sovereignties ; in fine, the contradictions , unfortunately 
frequent, which for some time past appear to exist between the language of 
the Government and its acts —all these circumstances have brought 
back Governments and people to their natural disposition to mis¬ 
trust. Austria is dissatisfied; the passions of 1813 are awakened in 
Germany, and influence Prussia; you are all aware that the mistrust 
is still greater in England.” 


B B 


386 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIF THE BONAPARTES? 


“We lately saw how decidedly in favour of evacuation, both by 
the Pope and the French army, are the views of Prince Napoleon, 
who is the Emperor’s cousin; a later speech lets us see how very 
different are the views of M. Grranier de Cassagnac, who is the 
Emperor’s editor.” 

“Napoleon, equally w T ith his own dignitaries, receives the re¬ 
proaches of the Liberal and priestly parties, and ivill certainly he 
trusted by neither while he persists in the vain endeavour to propitiate 
both^ 

“ Were the French to leave Pome, the Pope would be enabled to 
ask assistance of Austria, and France, having guarded Pome herself, 
would be unable to offer any opposition.” 

“The French people are really tired of the constant agitation 
regarding matters of external territory. They would much prefer 
that the authorities would devote their attention to internal 
affairs.” 

“The tone in which Italian questions are discussed by different 
French parties is not complimentary to an independent nation. It 
is universally assumed that the permanence of the new kingdom , as well as 
the settlement of the Roman question , depends wholly on the will of the 
Emperor Napoleon I—Saturday Review. 

“The alliance of France is no matter of choice with them; for, 
whenever all hopes were lost of being on good terms with both the 
Western Powers, they would instantly find themselves at the mercy 
of the one which not only is nearer, but which has already a foot on 
their necks. It has been hitherto the main study of the Emperor Napoleon 
so to lead the destinies of the Italian Peninsula, as never to allow her to 
budge one inch beyond the length of the tether to which he has confined her. 
By the Peace of Villafranca, and by the very line of the frontier of 
the Mincio, he left her so feeble on the side of Austria, that by only 
raising his little finger he may undo all his own work c/1859, without 
seeming to have a share in the matter 

“ At the same time, and on his own side, he took good care to 
press as close as possible on the border of the Western Alps, and by 
taking up his position at Pome, and hence harassing the southern 
provinces with his hordes of brigands, he placed Italy in such a 
position that, while he could still greatly avail himself of her forces, 
so long as she was passive in her allegiance to himself, it was always 
in his power, if she presumed to strike out her own path, to crush her or to 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 387 

have her crushed on the shortest notice , and without the shadow of a chance 
of resistance .”— Times. 

u Were tlie French Monarch bent upon improving the present 
opportunity, were he to seek in a quarrel with Russia and Prussia 
his own aggrandisement, were he to seize on the Rhine on his way 
to the Vistula— as a matter of course, the Italians would go along with 
him —with the consent of England, if it could be obtained, and with- 
her consent, if her consent be withheld.”— II. 

u Signor Mordini combated the policy of the Ministry, which he 
declared, by its opposition to all members of the party of the action, 
was spreading indifference* and general scepticism throughout the 
country, and continued :— 

11 1 1 consider the policy of Italy too subservient to foreign interests. If 
we were only to display more independence towards France, we 
should obtain the more efficacious friendship of England. ’ 

“ Signor Crispi also spoke against the loan. He did not approve 
the financial and administrative system of the Ministry.” 

“ The nearer insight we gain into these Southern difficulties, how¬ 
ever, the deeper becomes our impression of the great clog and hindrance 
that Northern Italy has found in her progress by associating the Two 
Sicilies to her destinies. A dualism was in all likelihood an impossi¬ 
bility, and Naples never would have been allowed—and would not 
now be allowed—a separate existence, without becoming a danger 
and a snare in the hands of Italy’s enemies. Annexation was an 
unavoidable evil—-a preservative against a far greater evil. The 
Italians must take Naples for better, for worse, even as the English 
took Ireland. In the Chamber , in the army , in the police , in the public 
offices , those luckless foreigners are invariably the jarring and disquieting 
elements. Five centuries’ rule have not yet assimilated, or even 
tamed Ireland; it is no wonder if the Italians, after less than three 
years’ union, find the Two Sicilies such a hard, uphill work for them.” 

“ The trial for the outrage perpetrated on the 1st of May at 
Genoa, in 1862, where a gang of ruffians entered by main force the 
Parodi bank, overpowered, bound, and gagged both bankers and 
clerks, and carried away more than 800,000f., terminated on Satur¬ 
day last, after a long debate, which lasted more than nineteen days. 
Four of the miscreants were condemned to the galleys for life, one 
for 25 years, another for 20, a third for 15, and several others to 
milder punishments.” 


b b 2 


388 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


u The disappointment of extravagant expectations produces de¬ 
spondency ; the sudden rise of former equals or inferiors provokes 
envy; social intercourse is disagreeably interrupted; and commercial 
dealings are necessarily suspended or disturbed. It was a matter of 
certainty that these causes of disontent should operate, for a while, 
with more than common force at Naples, where a large proportion 
of the population were never hostile to the dethroned family, whose 
worst oppressions had been exercised against members of the learned 
profession and the middle classes. The loss of a Court is a palpable 
grievance; it is galling to be reduced from a kingdom to a province ; and 
for the Neapolitans to be governed from Turin—a town niched under the 
mountains which form the northern boundary of the United Kingdom of 
Italy—is much the same as if the English were governed from Perth .”—, 
Saturday Preview. 

“ For several days we have had no direct information from Sicily. 
Considerable agitation and discontent have existed there for some 
time, and on the 12th inst. many arrests were made, the names of 
thirty-three being known. Among them are five priests, several 
employes , the Prince Giardinelli, the directors of two journals, mer¬ 
chants, and an inspector of police. They represent the extremes of 
parties, and show that both there and here there is a temporary union 
of opposite elements for a common object. So sudden was the blow 
that every one was taken by surprise, but no one doubts that the 

country was undermined by conspiracies.During the day the 

most violent and contradictory cries were uttered, as 1 Death to the 
enemies of Garibaldi!’ ‘ Death to Napoleon ! ’ ‘ Now is the time to 
get our King back ! ’ 1 Blood, blood! we must have blood ! ’ ” 

“Poor Farini is no longer fit to be the head of any Government. 
For loftiness of intellect and uprightness of heart he had hardly, 
after Count Cavour’s death, a rival among Italian patriots ; but 
his fine faculties and his robust frame are sinking under chronic 
disorders, and it was only a cruelty and a mockery to parade that 
mere wreck of a great man in official harness before the Chambers. 
Lately, indeed, he has discontinued his attendance, and now the 
Opinione itself seems to credit the report of his decisive resignation. 
Farini retired yesterday to a country-house of some of his friends 
near Susa.” 

The Man of December has, in my judgment, done more than either 
Genseric or Attila to destroy the peace and happiness of Italy, by 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


389 


infusing into the minds of the entire population a feeling of ambition, 
restlessness, and discontent. From the Piedmontese monarch, down 
to the most insignificant of the liberal boors or burgesses, every one 
seems to be saying, in reference to his own condition and prospects, 
as well as to those of the nation, “ All this availeth me nothing!” 
“ We must march to Venice—we must obtain possession of Pome 
whilst the laudatores temporis acti are bent upon the restoration of the 
dynasties under which they were peaceful and contented. Place¬ 
hunting is rife and rampant in every part of the Peninsula ; factious 
intrigue, and an insatiable thirst for pelf and promotion, disturb the 
harmony of families, and generate amongst neighbours emulations, 
strifes, and uncharitableness. 

“ A general dissatisfaction and almost discouragement is percep¬ 
tible throughout Italy, there is no doubt; disgust at the inevitably 
slow progress of national organisation, at the imperfection and in¬ 
efficiency of administrative reform, at the want of public security, 
at the unchecked success of rampant brigandage, at the indefinite 
postponement of the solution of the Poman and Venetian questions. 
But those who are readiest to acknowledge the evils are the last who 
would put any faith in the efficacy of Mazzinian remedies.”— Times. 

“As long as Francis II. remained within the limits of his former 
dominions, the struggle might be regarded as a civil war, but since 
the fall of Graeta and the departure of the ex-King, General Fergola 
has sunk into the position of a rebel engaged in maintaining the 
hopeless cause of a Pretender. No military commander has a right 
to continue resistance on a particular spot when the fortune of war 
has positively declared itself against the possibility of his ultimate 
success.”— Saturday Review. 

“ So long as the Pretender resides at so short a distance from his 
partisans, the lower classes of the Neapolitan population will never 
realise, to its full extent, the importance of the change of which they 
were witnesses, and will continue to look upon the present state of things 
as merely precarious and transitional. A possible restoration is as 
incessant a cause of fear to the patriots as it is of intense longing to 
their opponents.” 

“Signor Perruzzi began by saying that, inasmuch as some 
persons wished to sap the foundations of the unity of Italy, and 
inasmuch as some people had Bourbonist sympathies and a re¬ 
actionary tendency, therefore it was necessary that ‘ active surveil- 


390 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


lance and energetic and constant repression ’ should take place 
among the newspapers.” 

u The right hon. gentleman had reconciled his differences with the 
noble lord, and was now sitting in the same Cabinet, yet the hitter 
cry of distress from the same people, chastised now not with whips 
hut with scorpions, passed unheeded. ‘ Nostro Gladstone ’ was 
appealed to, and would not move his little finger. He appealed to 
the right hon. gentleman, not in the name of consistency, to which 
name the right hon. gentleman might turn a deaf ear, but in the 
name of humanity, to once more raise his voice, and endeavour, by 
proper representations, to obtain some amelioration in the condition 
of this unhappy people.” 

“ Inasmuch as the residence here of an unhappy Prince, the sove¬ 
reign ally of the Holy Father, has continually excited the animad¬ 
version of the English Cabinet, it was permitted to doubt whether 
England still vindicated for herself the noble right which she 
appears to deny to others—that of offering a refuge to misfortune. 
It is time that the ancient policy of Her Majesty’s Government in 
this respect should be formally re-asserted, and therefore, Mon¬ 
seigneur, in the case supposed, and in spite of anything inflated in 
the form, you will note with satisfaction the substance of such a 
declaration, and express the hope that we may henceforth be allowed 
to receive the King of the Two Sicilies at Pome, without exposing 
ourselves to calumnious appreciation or incurring malevolent re¬ 
proach .”—Papal State Paper. 

11 The Eco di Bologna had been in existence during two years, and, 
like a cat, it seemed to have a great many lives, for within that 
period it had been suppressed twenty-four times. At Bologna, how¬ 
ever, there appeared to be a plentiful supply of editors, for while 
the paper had been suppressed twenty-four times the poor editor 
had been condemned to four years’ imprisonment, and had been 
fined 7,000f. Hon. members who talked about the unity of Italy 
ought to bear in mind that one newspaper had been suppressed in 
Milan, for publishing that which was allowed to circulate in Naples, 
that another had been suppressed in Bologna for publishing matter 
which was allowed to circulate in Milan, and from such facts they 
would see how complete this Italian unity was .”—Speech in Parlia¬ 
ment. 

“An Italian Court-Martial. —A letter from Turin, dated No- 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 391 

vember 29th, states that a recent sitting of the military tribunal 
greatly occupied the attention of that city. M. Bosco de Ruffiro, 
captain of Bersaglieri, appeared before his judges to answer the 
accusation of having ordered last July, at Somina, near Naples, six 
innocent persons to be shot without any form of judgment. The public 
prosecutor demanded that he should be sentenced to the travaux 
forces for life, for abuse of power. The following are the circum¬ 
stances under which this young officer, aged only thirty-five, 
rendered himself guilty of the crime he is accused of:—While 
garrisoned at Portici, he was sent by order of General Cialdini to 
Somina, where a band of brigands had just made its appearance. 
On arriving at that place, after the flight of the robbers, the captain 
learned that six inhabitants of the village had aided the enterprise 
of the invaders. He had them immediately arrested, and on the 
accusation of several citizens, who, however, brought forward no 
sufficient proofs, he ordered them to be put to death in the courtyard of 
the barracks, in spite of their protestations of innocence. The subaltern 
officers were passive actors in this tragedy. Such are the facts 
stated in the public prosecutor’s address. Nevertheless, the court, 
after having heard the depositions of several witnesses proving the 
complicity of the victims with the bandits, unanimously acquitted him. 
The public approved this judgment by loud cheers .” (! ! !)— Times. 

“ Je ne vous ai cite ces quelques mots que comme un badinage 
d’un homme d’ esprit, mais on pourrait en deduire une consequence 
bien serieuse qui serait que la gravite du mal apparait aux yeux de 
tout le monde, le me content ement est universel; la lutte a main armee 
s’etend partout, mais le remede est impossible a decouvrir, car on ne 
peut pas penser serieusement a tuer quelques millions d’hommes 
pour les convertir a la politique annexionniste. Une pareille enor- 
mite, je me plais a la croire, ne serait pas meme admise par le 
premier Parlement Italien.”— Journal de Bruxelles. 

“All this great extent of country is loyal to him, and every part 
is at peace, except some provinces of the old kingdom of the Two 
Sicilies, where brigandage is kept alive by the machinations of the 
Royalists and the misery or idleness of the disbanded army. The 
suppression of the disturbances in the Abruzzi and other unquiet 
districts may be difficult, but when accomplished it will leave the 
King master of a dominion to which the other Italian provinces 
must eventually be added.”— Times. 


392 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


“ Thanks to the much-ridiculed, but not contemptible Peter’s 
pence, it seems undeniable that the Poman Court is swimming in 
gold, the Bourbon himself is not penniless, and Spain and France 
number fanatics in sufficient number to defray expenses to almost 
any amount. Were it not for the craven hearts of most of these 
Neapolitans, the bands might unite for some momentous exploit, 
and the brigandage would be dignified into downright civil war. 
The discontent is still very great among the upper classes throughout the 
Southern kingdom, and at Naples hardly one out of ten of the nolle 
families have joined the national movement. Most of the patr ician houses 
in the capital are silent and empty. In the provinces, especially in 
those where the extreme Liberals had the upper hand, the great 
landowners have been treated with roughness and indignity, and 
harbour no good-will to the powers that be.” 

“The man who was executed was a deserter from the conscrip¬ 
tion, and met his fate in consequence of the insinuations of his 
mother, who three months ago declared, on being arrested, that 
her son should join Pilone rather than serve the ‘ Scomunicato.’ ” 
— Times. 

“ Some say that Cialdini is ruining the country, awakening all its 
vindictive feelings, and driving away the timid and the lukewarm. 
They hold to Martino’s policy of conciliation, and talk of soothing. 
Others , on the contrary , are all for action , arresting , cuttmg down , hang¬ 
ing, quartering , and laming. Both are in extremes, but I must 
declare that I am in favour rather of Cialdini’s plan of action, 
because there is nothing here which can le conciliated. You have 
nothing in the national character sufficiently respectable to work 
upon—speaking of the people at large you have neither truth, 
honour, nor patriotic sentiment. With the exception of that com¬ 
paratively small class which represents the intelligence of the country, 
you have nothing to work upon but brutal ignorance, and to subdue 
that, only brutal measures, for the moment, can be adopted. In 
short, if Naples is ever to lecome a portion of United Italy it must le ly 
conquest. Is Northern Italy prepared for that ? ” 

“ II est d’autant plus interessant de recueillir ces aveux qu’ils sont 
arraches a un de leurs plus chauds partisans. Les epreuves , dit-il 
dans sa preface , que Dieu prepare a VItalie ne font que commencer. 
Amenes a 1’unite plutot par les fautes des princes, que par la 
prevision ou la sagesse d’un homme, ou par un sentiment reel 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


393 


(i avvertito bisogno ), le premier fruit que nous en recueillons, c’est 
l’anarchie gouvernementale et sociale.”— Journal de Bruxelles. 

U M. Plichon.—T outefois, je le reconnais, on n’emprisonne plus 
aujourd'hui dans le royaume de Naples , comme au temps des Bourbons: 
on y fust lie, ce procede est plus expeditif ; si c’est la un progres, je 
reconnais qu’il est obtenu.” 

“ I have already stated that thousands of runaways from conscrip¬ 
tion ( remtenti alia leva) are scattered about the country, along the 
line of the Apennines, between the ^Emilia and the Tuscany. Not 
a few of the Modenese conscripts allow themselves to be persuaded 
by their priests to evade the law by crossing the frontier and going 
over to the Austrians, where, if they are to be soldiers, they are 
hopeful of better treatment; that is, greater idleness and more 
unbridled licence in the service of the ex-Duke of Modena.” 

“ Cette abdication a-t-elle au moins donne le repos et la liberte en 
Italie ? Non; en Toscane, en Lombardie, dans les Marches et dans 
V Ombrie, si fen excepte les conspirateurs et quelques reveurs, la masse de la 
population est dejd fatiguee du regime Piemontais; on y deteste l’Autriclie 
sans y aimer le Piemont; la plus profonde anarchie regne dans le 
royaume des Deux-Siciles: l’assassinat fait la loi a Palerme; et le 
royaume de Naples tout entier proteste contre la domination 
Piemontaise.” 

Can we wonder that Tuscany is discontented, when an absentee 
sovereign of “ hot temper and limited capacity ” has been substituted 
for the popular and praiseworthy representative of a native and 
resident dynasty ?— 

“ In that little country of Tuscany, in which I lived for several 
months under the benignant rule of a most mild and enlightened 
Government, we have seen it overturned by democracy; we have 
seen the Grand Duke driven from his dominions by the party who 
seek what is called Italian unity; and we have afterwards seen that 
democratic Government suppressed, and the Grand Duke restored to 
absolute power.”— Bari Russell. 

Nowhere has universal suffrage been exhibited in a more ludicrous 
and lamentable light than in Italy, and by no arbitrary and arro¬ 
gant minister were elections so tampered with, or freedom of choice 
so trodden under foot, as by Cavour. 

“In South Italy he found Pomano, a Piedmontese Minister, re- 


394 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


turned at tlie head of the poll by 119 votes; Castellana, another Pied¬ 
montese, was returned by 99 votes, Possi by 60, and Salciete by 60. 
What could the House think of the universal suffrage which produced 
only 119 voters out of a vast population ? Then, again, how had the 
Piedmontese managed the elections ? At Piacenza the number who 
were allowed to be entered upon the poll-books was 1,213, and of 
those only 68 voted. The loyal inhabitants did not wish to take 
part in the proceedings, and hoped, as he sanguinely hoped, for 
better days to come. At Milan there were only 239 voted, at 
Florence, 144; but the Piedmontese also kept out those of whom, 
although elected, they did not approve. Signor Safi ivas elected by 
154 votes out of 162; but he was not allowed to talce his seat , as it 
appeared he was an ardent Republican , which character was not in good 
odour just now with Count Cavour. A scrutiny was therefore 
instituted by the returning officer after the election, and he struck 
off 121 out of the 154 votes.”— Speech in British Parliament. 

“ On ecrit de Naples, le 4 Juin, a V Union : 

“ ‘ Quelques mots pour vous donner signe de vie, n’ay ant rien de 
bien interessant a vous dire. La fete de Dimanche (2 Juin) s’est 
passee selon le programme officiel. Pas la moindre demonstration de 
joie spontanee ou d' > alleyresse publique. Cela pouvait tout aussi bien 
ressembler a un enterrement qtd a une fete. Quelques cris de Vive Gari¬ 
baldi ! pousses dans la soiree, ont ete la seule manifestation d’un 
enthousiasme etient. Comment voulez-vous que le peuple qui meurt 
de faim, l’aristocratie menacee, le clerge persecute, puissent songer a 
applaudir ceux qui ont cree une si malheureuse situation?” 

“ Quoi! le Piemont demande le permission d’occuper, a titre con¬ 
servatoire, des provinces pontificates pour les preserver, dit-il, de 
l’incendie revolutionnaire qui les menace, et les restituer apres la 
erise ! et la menace de cet incendie etait un mensonge ! La revolu¬ 
tion dans les Etats de Naples en ce moment, loin de se developper, 
etait tenue en ecliec et meme compromise sur le Yolturne, et cepen- 
dont le Piemont se jette sur ces provinces paisibles ; il y egorge les 
enfants de la France.” 

“ M. le President. —Ce que vous dites est contraire a tout ce que 
vous avez dit et vote vous-meme.” 

“ M. Plichon. —La sagesse et la moderation de l’Empereur, au 
debut de son regne, etaient parvenues a amortir cette defiance, mais 
la guerre d’ltalie, l’inexecution de la paix de Villafranca, les com- 


I 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 395 

plaisances du gouvemement Francais pour la revolution Italienne, 
1’application a l’organisation en Italie des principes, qui sont la 
negation du droit de souverainete des dynasties, enfin les contradic¬ 
tions, mallieureusenient frequentes, qui, depuis quelque temps, sem- 
blent se remarquer entre les paroles du gouvemement et les resultats ; 
toutes ces circonstances out ramene les gouvernements et les peuples 
a leurs dispositions naturelles de defiance. L’Autriclie est mecon- 
tent; les passions de 1813 se sont reveilles en Allemagne, et en- 
trainent la Prusse; en Angleterre, vous le savez tous, les defiances 
sont plus profondes encore.” 

“Pourquoi le dissimuler, le nom de Napoleon, qui a ete pour la 
France le signe providentiel du ralliement, au moment de nos dis- 
cordes civiles, est pour 1’Europe a lui seul une source de defiance ; 
car dans ce nom s’income le souvenir des plus grandes calamites qui 
Vaient accablee .” 

“Enparlant de la repression cruelle des troubles de quelques 
communes, M. del Griiidice adresse les mots suivants au cbef d’un 
conseil de guerre: ‘ Le jugement que le conseil de guerre a emis 
cette nuit me parait bien severe. Aux tueries faites par les rebelles 
vous en ajoutez legalement une autre. C’est treize victimes que nous 
ajoutons aux trente mortes dans les prisons ou dans les campagnes 
et il en laisse executer dix, demandant pour les trois autres une com¬ 
mutation de peine.” 

“Mais la lettre la plus remarquable est celle qu’il adresse au 
ministre de la police, et que je traduis mot a mot: ‘ Par votre lettre 
du 16 courant (secretariat, n°. 10,323), vous avez ordonne que les 
detenus sous la rubrique de reactionnaires, quand meme ils seraient 
absous par le pouvoir judiciaire, doivent rester en prison a la dispo¬ 
sition de ce ministere.’ Je vous signifie ouvertement ‘ que, tant que 
je reglerai les affaires publique dans cette province, je ne pourrai 
me conformer a de pareilles dispositions.’ ” 

“ Je le clis avec une conviction profonde, 1’unite de l’ltalie est un 
reve, une Utopie qui ne peut engendrer que des deceptions et des 
mallieurs ; en voulant l’atteindre, la revolution poursuit un resultat 
contraire aux traditions, aux tendances, a 1’esprit des populations. 
Et si jamais elle parvient a la realiser, ce ne sera que par de 
nouvelles violences, et on aura une oeuvre epliemere, destinee a 
s’evanouir sous 1’influence du genie meconnu des diverses national- 
ites, qui, toutes, s’agiteront pour recouvrer leur existence. Ce n’est 


396 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


pas au moyen d’un deeret, ni meme d’un scrutin an suffrage uni- 
versel, qui, grace aux procedes connus, generalement appliques en 
Italie, est capable d’approuver les plus grandes folies de la terre, 
que Ton change du jour au lendemain 1’esprit, les passions et les 
aspirations traditionnelles des peuples.” 

“ On m’assure que dans la prison de la Concorde , ou sont detenus 
tous les ecelesiastiques soupconnes comme reactionnaires, les autorites 
locales ont present la celebration d’une messe solennelle, et le chant 
d’un Te Deurn pour le Eoi d’ltalie. Tous les pretres, sans exception, 
se seraient refuses, malgre les menaces et les mauvais traitements, 
disant qu’ils etaient resignes meme au martyre. 

“ The severities of the Sardinian Generals in South Italy are now 
attracting notice. Report speaks of a ‘ counter-massacre in Pante- 
landolfo,’ a case of the indiscriminate slaughter of the whole popula¬ 
tion of a town, of ‘ 300 persons burnt in a wood near PotenzaJ 1 of 48 
men shot in cold blood by General Pinelli after a battle,' 1 including an 
actual prisoner of theirs who, appearing among them, was mistaken 
for one of them, and was not allowed to explain. These may be, 
and probably are, exaggerations ; our correspondent, however, with 
all his admiration of the Italian cause, does not disguise his belief 
that there is some truth in these charges, and that the Sardinian 
army in South Italy has committed excesses , and therefore we can only 
say that we are truly sorry to hear of such a blot upon a noble* cause. 
At the same time, while we protest against such violences, we can¬ 
not allow every summary proceeding of a Sardinian General to with¬ 
draw our sympathies from the Italian cause.* 

“It is now a question of the last importance to Italy and Europe 
to determine how order may be restored. It is too late to think of 
conciliating the brigands; only instant and continued severity will 
have any effect.” 

“M. Plichon.— Ce n’est pas tout: le Piemont, au lieu de sauve- 
garder de la revolution les provinces envahies et de les restituer au 
Saint-Siege, les insurge et s’en empare au moyen de la comedie du 
scrutin au suffrage universel pratique comme il l’a ete en Italie. Ce 
n’est pas tout, des Marches et de l’Ombrie, il envahit les Etats de 

* The cruelty and harshness with which the ex-Duke of Savoy treats his newly 
acquired dominions, under a system of martial law, or rather of martial lawless¬ 
ness, reminds me of Dr. Johnson’s fishmonger, who, whilst skinning live eels, was 
in the habit of cursing them for not lying still. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE B0NAPARTE3 ? 


397 


Naples, non pour aller y combattre la revolution, comine on l’avait 
promis, mais pour la secourir et la faire triompber. La France, je 
le demande, a-t-elle jamais recu un outrage plus sanglant? Ou en 
est la repression ? Je la clierche en vain. Rien dans les documents 
communiques n’indique meme qu’une reparation ait ete demandee. 
Le gouvernement s’est contente du rappel de notre ambassadeur, 
comme si c’etait la une reparation! et jusqu’ a ce jour le Piemont 
reste en possession paisible des provinces conquises au moyen de cet 
indigne subterfuge.” 

“II est certain que les affaires de Naples vont mal. Les Napoli- 
tains ne veulent pas absolument s’amalgamer avec les Piemontais; 
les conspirations succedent aux conspirations, le desordre est par- 
tout, et les pretendants ont beau jeu. Une adresse des cardinaux, 
arclieveques, et eveques Napolitains a ete, comme nous l’avons dit, 
envoyee au Prince de Carignan, le 7 Mars dernier; les eveques exiles 
y ont adhere par un acte du 23 mars. Dans cette adresse, l’episcopat 
Napolitain proteste contre 1’abolition du Concordat; il raconte tout 
ce qui s’est fait contre 1’Eglise depuis 1’entree des Piemontais dansle 
royaume de Naples. Ce document fait mieux connaitre que tout le 
reste le triste etat dans lequel se trouve l’Eglise des Deux-Siciles, et 
quels sont les principes sur lesquels s’appuie la Revolution. 

“go great and universal are the discontent and disorder, and so 
strong is the prejudice against being ‘ Piedmontised,’ that I would 
almost hazard the opinion that the South of Italy to be retained 
must undergo an armed occupation and be governed by the sword. 
How far this is desirable or practicable time, which solves all diffi¬ 
culties, alone can show. Besides a general aversion from the rule 
of the Piedmontese—for these people will not merge the distinction 
in names of the various inhabitants of the Peninsula in that general 
one of Italians—there are numerous specific accusations which are 
made against the Government, and, if I mistake not, the approach¬ 
ing session of Parliament will be marked by much violent recrimina¬ 
tion. I have met with deputies, and those not Neapolitans only, 
who have been round the provinces taking notes of what has hap¬ 
pened, verifying awkward facts and preparing themselves for the 
encounter.— Times. 

“From Sicily we have rumours of uneasiness, and of conspiracies 
discovered, but they are not sufficiently decided to allow me to say 
much on the subject. Of this, however, be assured, that both here 


398 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


and there the Bonrbonites are working, and that we shall hear more 
of them shortly.’’ 

“So long as the whole organisation of Italy is provisional—in 
other words, till Borne and Yenetia are finally annexed, the restless 
part of her population cannot he expected to settle down into peace¬ 
ful habits.” 

“ The opening of a railway is a political event in Italy—the open¬ 
ing of the Ancona Bailway a great political event. The unification 
of Italy is very far from being an accomplished fact; nay , it seems to 
many yet an anxious , arduous , dangerous undertalcing. The infinite 
wisdom of Providence, which meditated it for so many centuries, 
only brought it now to maturity, now that, although still as difficult 
as ever, railways have made it just possible.” 

“ This apparently puerile gossipping matter is fraught with great 
danger to the country—the danger of bringing about ignominiously, 
by internal disorder, the ruin of that national cause which, thanks 
to Providence, has just now so little to dread from outward attacks.” 

“ He stated that five of the insurgents who had been taken with 
arms in their hands, had, at the close of the outbreak, been shot in 
cold blood without any legal trial, and even without the summary 
formalities of a Court-martial. He stigmatised this deed as a viola¬ 
tion of the statute, contended that violence and cruelty were no 
proofs of energy, and that the free Italian government should not 
follow the Bourbon despots in their ruthless system of dealing with 
political opponents.” 

“The subjugation of the Abruzzi by the supposed universally- 
elected Sardinian Government has been attended with tremendous 
outlay and serious loss. All proprietors of land, whether of the 
large estates in Britain or the small holdings of Prance and Italy, 
have a strong tendency to Conservatism.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


399 


'K.—The Pope. 

The conflicts and controversies, by which Italy bas so long been 
agitated and aggrieved, do not, in my bumble judgment, at all par¬ 
take of a religious character. There is no struggle between Roman 
Catholicism and Protestantism. Victor Emmanuel and his partisans 
profess the most profound veneration for the Pope, in his spiritual 
capacity, and glory in belonging to the church, of which he is the 
recognised head. “ Cavour, with all his liberal aspirations, regarded 
the Papacy as the remaining glory of Italy. He not only believed in 
the reconciliation between Kang and Pontiff, but had the pride of 
heart to believe that when the reconciliation was effected, the 
spiritual power of the latter, under that of a constitutional sove¬ 
reign, would give Italy the palm at least among Roman Catholic 
nations” ( United Presbyterian Magazine'). “Art. 2. The Government 
of his Majesty the King of Italy pledges himself not to interpose an 
obstacle on any occasion to the acts performed by the Sovereign 
Pontiff in virtue of the Divine right as Chief of the Church , and in virtue 
of the canonical laic as Patriarch of the West and Primate of Italy. ” 
The priests, who implore his Holiness to relinquish his temporal 
dominions, are far from renouncing their ecclesiastical allegiance, 
and maintain that his spiritual authority would not be cancelled, 
but confirmed, by the step which they recommend. I think, there¬ 
fore, that Protestants, as such , can take no lively interest in the 
dispute, since both parties are equally and most decidedly hostile to 
the “heretical” and heterodox creed. 

They do not wish “to separate from that communion to which 
for eighteen centuries the Italians have had the glory and happiness 
to belong.” 

“What we ask is, that the Church, which, as the interpreter and 
guardian of the Gospel, has brought into human society a principle 
of supernatural legislation, and has become the initiator of social 
progress, should pursue its Divine mission , and demonstrate still more 
the necessity of its existence, by the inexhaustible fruitfulness of its 
relations with the work already commenced and inspired by God.” 


400 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“Every contest must end either by the defeat or by the death of 
one of the combatants, or by their reconciliation. The rights of 
nationality are imperishable, and the See of Holy Peter, by virtue 
of a Divine promise, is imperishable also.” 

“ The Papacy must fall, but the Church must stand; nay, it must 
be more strongly united than it ever was ; the world must see that 
the only element of division and weakness in the Church was the 
Papacy—the institution of a Pope-King .”—Liberal Italian Paper. 

Endeavouring, therefore, to take an impartial view of the question, 
as between one Eomanist party and the other, I must own, that I 
contemplate with astonishment and indignation the conduct adopted 
towards the Pope by the Man of December, and the King of Sar¬ 
dinia, who both claim to be “Sons of the Church.” The latter 
has already annexed one-half of the Papal dominions to his own; 
the other has connived at, and confirmed, an act of unprovoked 
aggression, which by the utterance of a single word he might 
have prevented or annulled, and which is condemned by the Pope 
himself, by all his cardinals and prelates, by all the Poman Catholic 
sovereigns, and by an overwhelming majority of the Poman Catholic 
laity in every part of the world. 

Je savais tour-a-tour leur dormer l’avantage, 

Et je les enflammais pas l’affront du partage. 

CoLARDEAU. 

If the Piedmontese Ahab should say to the much-wronged Naboth, 
“I have killed and taken possession”—killed many thousands of 
your defenders, and taken possession of the greater part of your 
territories—surrender peaceably the remainder, and, “if it seem 
good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.” Could any 
man of an upright mind be surprised, if the answer should be, 

‘ £ The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my 
predecessors unto thee,” even although the King should return 
“heavy and displeased, and “liberal” Italians should assert, that 
in addition to his obstinacy, “his alliance with the Bourbon and 
Chiavone has filled the measure of Italian contempt and detestation 
of Pius IX. and his Court .”—Liberal Paper. 

It is impossible that a sincere and genuine Protestant can regard 
with any strong feeling of respect or sympathy a Church which 
denounces members of every other communion as guilty of heresy 
and schism. In vain does the eloquent and enlightened Montalem- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO ‘WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


401 


bert contend for religious freedom and equality. T'lie principles of 
the Romish Church must be gathered from the more reliable autho¬ 
rities of its Head and leading dignitaries. Speaking of a recent 
Papal address, we learn that his Holiness censures the introduction of 
liberty of worship and the conduct of the ecclesiastics who obey ini- 
quitious laws.”— Times. 

“ Every communion whatever (says Cardinal Sporza) separated 
and divided from the instruction of the Church and its authorities is 
heretical and schismatical, by whatever pompous title of Church or 
religion it may be called. Heretical and schismatical, consequently, 
is the so-called Evangelical Church ; heretical and schismatical is the 
so-called Reformed Church; heretical and schismatical is that which 
is called the Anglican Church; as are also the Presbyterian and 
Episcopalian, the Congregational, and so on for as many others as 
human misery has been able to invent. . . . Ah ! in what a grievous 

state, and in how many grave dangers in the midst of such iniquitous 
instructors, is the Church of Grod placed! % 

* These “ iniquitous instructors ” are indeed “ blind leaders of the blind since 
they presume to trust in Christ alone for salvation, and the “ no tali auxilio " prin¬ 
ciple when exhorted to act upon, “ encumber themselves with the help of beatified 
saints and “ blinking images.” 

“ The Last New' Saint. —A letter from Rome, in the Journal cle Saone et Loire , 
contains the following :—‘ An important assembly of the Congregation of Rites has 
just taken place here. This body, which was presided over by Cardinal Patrizzi, 
after having beard in succession the advocates of God and of the devil, pronounced 
the canonisation of the blessed Marie Alacoquc, already declared an object of venera¬ 
tion in 1834. This new saint was a native of Burgundy, being born in 1647 at 
Hautecour, in the commune of Yerosvres. Being of feeble health during her youth, 
she entered the convent of the Visitandines of Paray-le-Monial at the age of twenty- 
three. While there she saw visions, Jesus appearing and charging her to p>ropagate 
a particular worship — that of his heart. Sister Alacoque first met with some oppo¬ 
sition, but by means of the support of the Jesuits the devotion of the Sacred Heart 
became propagated, and the convent of the Dames du Sacre Coeur v r as founded. 
Marie Alacoque then became a celebrity, and her life has been written by Languet, 
Archbishop of Sens.’’ 

“The getting up of miracle-working pictures is to be found passim; and not 
sufficing the special demonstrations at Spoleto and Yico-Yari, a blinking Madonna 
has sprung up in Subiaco. Curious that these miracles occur generally in out-of- 
the-way places, among the simple and the ignorant! Wherever they occur, how¬ 
ever, the wisdom of the serpent w r ould suggest some check to their being overdone, 
for these pious frauds have a double edge in the long run, wounding the Church far 
more than the heretic.— Times 


C C 


402 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


“The Cardinal feels very uncomfortable wlien a Protestant is not 
gagged, and lie shudders at the very idea of his mouth being left 
open. lie thinks it an impiety to allow him to perform even his own 
worship in a church of his own in a Roman Catholic city. What will 
he say, then, when M. Montalembert goes on to claim for heretics of 
every sort the right not only to worship, but to promulgate and 
spread their doctrines in Roman countries without check or hindrance, 
without fine or penalty, by all the weapons of persuasion they can 
command ? The Cardinal has not yet embraced the first and most 
elementary rudiments of the theory of toleration; while M. Monta- 
lembert proclaims the system in its fullest development, and with all 
its consequences, as the most thorough-going Liberal would state 
them.”— Times. 

Whilst, however, Protestants repudiate the Romish system as 
characterised by error and intolerance, I repeat that they may, at the 
same time, condemn the hypocrisy and haughtiness of unscrupulous 
rulers and statesmen who profess allegiance to the Church of Rome, 
and yet despoil the Pope of a large portion of his dominions (which 
he is bound, by the example of his predecessors, to maintain in their 
integrity), and are only “biding their time” to obtain, by force of 
arms, possession of what remains. 

“ The Minister of War has issued a circular, stating that the King 
has expressed his satisfaction with the excellent condition and pro¬ 
gress of the army, as shown on the occasion of the late manoeuvre at 
the Camp of S omnia. The circular urges commanders to pursue 
their task with energy, and says the army will then he able to realise 
the wishes of the country .” 

“ A column of troops, commanded by General Go vine, has com¬ 
menced a perquisition with the object of arresting all persons who have 
evaded the conscription [rendered necessary for the conquest of Rome 
and Venice].” 

It is a remarkable fact, that the Popes, Elective Sovereigns, and 
who alone, of all such, have no hope whatever of transmitting to 
their issue or their relatives any portion of their power, have always 
been, and still are, scrupulously careful not to diminish the splendour 
and glory of the Papal chair, although they may sometimes foresee 
that, after their death, it will be occupied by their bitterest enemy.— 
Nicotine , 377. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


403 


The intervention of the British Foreign Secretary appears to 
have been unseemly, uncalled-for, and ill-timed. Is it to be sup¬ 
posed, that the Pope seriously intended (in the event of his expul¬ 
sion), to give the go-by to all the sovereigns of his own communion, 
and prefer placing himself under the protection of a heretical power ? 
At the time when the offer was made, the defeat of Garibaldi, and 
the tardy but positive declaration of the Man of December, had 
placed the Pope in an attitude of security, and this British fire- 
engine was never heard of, until the conflagration had subsided. 
Our self-important statesman, however, is always so enamoured of 
his own “idea,” that I am only surprised he did not invite Lord 
Ellenborough to accompany him by an express train to Pome, in 
order to recommend its immediate evacuation on the part of the 
rightful owner, in favour of the rapacious claimant, whom he so 
pertinaciously keeps out. On hearing of his arrival, his Holiness 
would naturally conclude, that her Majesty’s advisers had respect¬ 
fully tendered, not the offer of a ship to effect his escape from his 
capital and from Italy, but the intervention of a British negociator, 
to prevent any further encroachment upon his remaining territory, 
or even assist in effecting the restoration of what had been unjustly 
taken away. On learning, however, that the only object in view 
was to offer to him an asylum, in case he should be forcibly driven 
from his palace, the Pope might perhaps say— 

La reine cn ma favour est trop inquietee, 

De soins plus importans jc l’ai crue agitce, 

Seigneur et, sur le noni de son ambassadcur, 

J’avais dans ses projets conyu plus de grandeur ; 

Qui croirait en offet qu’une telle entreprise 
D’un grand liomme d’etat meritat l’entremise r 
Seigneur, tant de prudence entraine trop de soin, 

Je ne sais point preyoir les malheurs de si loin. 

Kacine. 

Having made little or no impression on the Homan “sickman,” the 
“ Medecin malgre le malade ” might solicit an interview with Cardinal 
Antonelli, and endeavour, through his instrumentality, to mediate 
between the contending parties. His Eminence, no doubt, would 
“ insist, that the Pope and his Government were, to be sure, ‘quite 
ready and willing to treat with the Sardinian or Italian Government, 
but that the preliminaries to all negotiation were the restitution of 

c c 2 


404 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


the provinces which had been dismembered from the Pontifical 
dominions; ’ that the Pope thought so, and he himself (Antonelli) 
never had viewed—never could view the subject in any other light.” 

The noble mediator might then frankly state to the Cardinal (in 
the words which he actually uttered in the House of Lords): “ I 
must at once inform your Eminence, that the perusal of recent 
diplomatic correspondence has confirmed me in one opinion, which I 
had long entertained—namely, that the Papal Government is con¬ 
ducted on principles totally different from those of other civilised 
Governments which prevail in our day.” 

“It has been stated, in one of the French Chambers, that at 
Turin they no longer talk of Pome. Your Eminence will, I am 
sure, not assert that because men no longer talk, they no longer 
think. They only think the more ; but instead of endeavouring 
by negotiation with the Emperor of the French to effect their pur¬ 
pose, they determine to effect it by giving a thoroughly good 
Government to their country, and making her strong in arms.” 

“ I believe that foreign occupation will cease as soon as the 
French people see that they are not doing justice to the Italians by 
continuing it, and I believe the Emperor will be the first to hail that 
opinion of the French people; and then I hope—though your 
Eminence may think me wrong—that the Pope may take refuge in 
Malta, or in Spain, or Austria, or any other place where he may 
think he would be most independent.” 

“ In conclusion, I have only to reiterate my opinion, that it would 
be for the benefit of the Italians and of Europe if Pome should 
become the caintal of Italy, and cease to be the ground of foreign 
occupation.” 

Lord Ellenborough, if standing beside the noble Secretary, might 
then put in his word, and say: “I was glad to hear the noble Earl 
express to your Eminence a belief, which I share with him, that a 
man who has the sense and the judgment of the Emperor cannot, in 
his own mind, hesitate as to the course which it is most for the 
interests of France to pursue. JTe may not feel himself strong enough 
at home to do that which he \thinks right , but lie must have the desire to 
consummate and complete the great work he has commenced, and to 
do that which more than anything he has yet achieved will, in dis¬ 
tant ages, tend to his honour and immortality—the establishment in 
the South of Europe of a new great State, which, in its natural 


OUCIIT FRANCE TO WORSIIIP THE BONAPAllTES ? 


405 


position of independence will, more than any event that has taken 
place for upwards of a century, conduce to the future peace and 
tranquillity of Europe.” 

The Cardinal would here lose all patience, and we shall borrow 
from the 11 Me dec in Mdl-gre LuV' 1 the conclusion of the colloquy :—• 

r 

His Eminence.—D e quoi vous nitdez vous ? 

Earl Russell. —J’ai tort. 

H. E.—Est ce la votre affaire ? 

E. R.—Vous avoz raison. 

H. E.—Yoyez nn peu cet impertinent, qui vent empeclier leFape d’etre le maitre 
chez soi! 

E. R.—Jo me retracte. 

II. E.—Qu’avez vous avoir la dessus ? 

E. R.—Rien. 

H. E.—Est ce a vous d’y mettre le nez ? 

E. R.—Hon. 

H. E.—Melez vous de vos affaires. 

E. R.—D’accord. 

II. E.—Ce n’est pas a vos depens. 

E. R.—II est vrai. 

II. E.—Et vous etes un sot de venir vous fourres oil vous n’avez que faiio. 

Here it is added— 


Elle lui donne un soufflet; 

the justice of which we shall leave the reader to determine. 

Ilis Eminence would then turn to the Earl of Ellenborough, after 
telling him that he agreed with his friend Lord Normanby, in con¬ 
sidering the proposal as “ neither more nor less than that it was the 
noble Secretary’s goodwill and pleasure, and evidently the Earl of 
Ellenborougli’s also, that the Pope should abandon his territory, give 
up his friends, and seek safety in flight,” he would add— 


Vous n’avez rien a me commander. 

Earl oe Ellenborougii. —D’accord. 

His Eminence— Je n’ai que faire de votre aide. 

E. E.—Tres volontiers. 

H. E.—Et vous etes un impertinent de vous ingerer dans les affaires d’autrui. 

Moliere. 

Apres cela, Seigneurs, jc ne vous retiens plus ; 

Et vous pouvez chez vous annoncer mon refus. 


Racine. 


406 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES? 


Common sense seems to suggest, that the Pope and Cardinals of 
the Poman Catholic Church would consider it beneath their dignity 
to be placed, like the Ionian islands, under the Protectorate of 
Great Britain. 

The conduct of the Man of December, in reference to the Pope, 
has been marked by as many variations as there are points in the 
compass, and yet has, in one sense, been perfectly consistent—con¬ 
sistent, I mean, with the only “idea” to which he attaches any 
value—that of doing, per fas aid nefas , on all occasions, and under 
all circumstances, whatever is calculated to provide his own advan¬ 
tage. 

“ The French Government is abominated at Pome. Napoleon’s 
fall, it is believed by the Ultramontanes, would compel Piedmont to 
retire within her former frontiers, and speedily settle the affairs of 
the Papacy.”— Times. 

The position of the French in Pome is this, that, unable to secure 
the respect of those whom they protect, they prevent every justifi¬ 
able retaliation on the part of those who are daily insulted and 
injured. Truly, it is a splendid position which the Grand Nation 
occupies.”— Times. 

“ The paternal Government of the Pope is forced on an unwilling 
people by the selfish policy of France.”— lb. 

“ The tribunal is in possession of documents, also found at 
M. Venanzi’s, which prove that the Due de Grammont, the Marquis 
do Lavalette, the French Ambassador, and General de Goyon are 
perfectly acquainted with all the proceedings of the Poman Com¬ 
mittee, and had approved many of its acts hostile to the Pontifical 
Government .” 

The Pope lias much cause to dread and deprecate the presence at 
his Court, of the imperious Decemberist ambassadors, by whom lie 
is alternately coerced and cajoled. They sanction the annexation of 
one-half of the Papal dominions, and act as paramount masters of 
what remains—• 

Le ministre Frar.cais n’est toujours redoutable— 

Cc n’est qu’un ennemi, sous un litre honorable— 

Qui vient rempli d’orgueil, ou de dexterite, 

Susulter ou trahir avec impunite. 


Volta the. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


407 


“ The objections to a French military occupation of the kingdom of 
Naples, apply equally to a French military occupation of the posses¬ 
sions of the Prince of the Poman States, and the occupation of 
Pome is as contrary to the principle of non-intervention as would be 
the occupation of Florence. The Emperor might have left it to 
others to invest him with the magnificent titles of ‘ Pacificator,’ 
1 Arbiter of Europe,’ and ‘Moderator of Revolution.’ Such names 
are honourable indeed, when conferred by the common consent and 
feeling of mankind ; but of little weight when assumed without that 

preliminary sanction.Europe does not recognise in the 

Emperor of the French either its pacificator or its arbiter. A 
pacificator is one who neither originates, nor fosters, war; an arbiter 
is one to whose justice, fairness, and absence of interest or selfish 
motives mankind are willing to submit their differences. The con¬ 
queror of Magenta and Solferino is no pacificator. The sovereign, 
who made war for an idea, and ended it for a province, may be great 
in the executive, but can lay little claim to the impartiality of the 
j udicial character. ’ ’— Times. 

We know that, when President, “as he was the last to assent to 
the expedition to Pome,” he asserted, that he “ had been the most 
constant and energetic in his determination, that the restoration, 
effected by his means, should not end in pure clerical despotism ' 1 ' 1 — 
(Man of December'). An antipapal manifesto appeared (by way of 
“ feeler ”), as to the state of mind in France at a later period, which 
was, I believe, subsequently disclaimed; but it never could have 
seen the light at Paris, without his sanction and approval; and the 
certainty of the fact is always proportioned to the vehemence of the 
denial. 

“A new pamphlet, entitled ‘ The Emperor, Pome, and the King 
of Italy,’ has appeared this morning. The substance of the pam¬ 
phlet implies that it is impossible to see actually at Pome anything 
else but a ‘ Ooblentz ’ directed against the King of Italy, the Emperor 
of the French, civilisation, progress, the country, and liberty. Such 
a conspiracy cannot be tolerated under the French flag. France is 
about to withdrw her troops, and the principle of non-intervention 
will be strictly maintained. There is not a single guarantee, either 
moral or material, which has not been offered by the Italian Ministers 
for the independence of the Sovereign Pontiff. If the Court of Pome 
obstinately persists in refusing, an appeal will be made to the Roman 



408 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


people. Tlie Plebiscite will take place under the eyes of the French 
army. If Victor Emmanuel is called upon to reign, on the following 
day the French troops will be relieved by the Italian troops, and the 
King of Italy will publish the accordance agreed upon between him 
and the Catholic Powers, with a view to the independence of the 
Holy See. The Pope may then act as he pleases .”—Scotch Taper. 

“There are passages in which the ancient watchwords of Catho¬ 
licism are borrowed, and the supernatural pretensions of its Head all 
but recognised, just as there are passages in the most rationalistic of 
the Greek tragedies in which Zeus and his brother gods are men¬ 
tioned almost as if they were lords of the universe; yet, after all, 
they are treated as secondary powers, and Fate, or, as it is now called, 

‘ political necessity,’ is made to rule everything. This is the ultima 
ratio now addressed to Pius IX. He is implored, he is conjured by 
the peaceful faith of which he claims to be the chief minister; by the 
welfare of Italy, to which he once seemed ready to sacrifice so much; 
and by the principles of modern civilisation, which he is presumed to 
recognise, not to make Pome the rallying point of disorder and dis¬ 
union. But he is told, with cruel frankness, how unsound his own 
title is, and what the alternative will be. It is broadly laid down, 
that ‘ the greatest evils of Italy have proceeded from the temporal 
power of the Popes.’ He is reminded that what Charlemagne gave 
Napoleon took away. More than once it is repeated that, come what 
will, the French troops will evacuate Pome, and that the Holy 
Father may then ‘ do as he pleases.’ ” 

“ Italy has a right to her capital, and the duty of France is to 
hasten the time to surrender it to her.” 

The third chapter anatomizes mercilessly the temporal power of 
the Pope. It begins :—“We have the sad and scandalous sight in 
the centre of Europe, in the midst of the nineteenth century, of 
seeing a Power which says, ‘ This people is mine; it is my property.’ 
And if one thinks that the Power which holds this language is an 
ideal Power, half sacred, which speaks in the name of God, is this 
not a double and triple scandal ? ‘ Let them show the lease which 

God gave them,’ replied General Bonaparte to the Mamelukes, who 
pretended that they had a lease of the land of Egypt, and that the 
Egyptians were for them like farm cattle. In reality, Papacy 
adduces against Italy the principle of expropriation for religious 
utility. But where has this singular right been ever heard of ? In 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE DONAPARTES ? 


409 


what code of laws is it written ? And on wliat moral principle does 
it repose ? Tlie greatest miseries of Italy liave come from the tem¬ 
poral power of the Popes. Italy could not live being cut in two by 
the States of the Church. It is the temporal power of the Papacy 
which has impeded Italy from becoming a nation like France. 
Another argument.—The great principle of civilisation, which sepa¬ 
rates the spiritual and temporal power, finds a living contradiction 
in the power of the Pope, and yet Christ has said that word which 
has not always been understood in all its profoundness — 1 Give to 
Ccesar what is Csesar’s,’ &c. The Bishop of Pome, when he took the 
place of the Emperors, became, like them, Pontifex and King, 
Thus, the old tyranny has perpetuated itself in Pome, in spite of the 
word of Christ.” 

The evils inflicted on the Papacy by the Eldest Son of the Church 
are tersely enumerated in the following summary :— 

“ But for the counsels of the Emperor and the fatal valour of his 
armies, the Pope might be enjoying at this moment, in as ample a 
manner as is consistent with the extremity of misgovernment and 
maladministration, the whole patrimony wdiich Julius II. bequeathed 
to his successors. If Piedmont fired the piece which brought down 
the edifice of Papal dominion, the hand of the Emperor of the French 
pointed it, and his voice gave the signal. Since then the Emperor 
has undergone from the Pope and his adherents every species of 
denunciation short of the mediaeval formularies of Excommunication 
and Interdict.’’— Times. 

And yet he is regarded, on the other hand, as the main support of 
the very power which he has allowed his vassal-ally to cripple and 
crush. 

“ Let the Papal Government pursue a little longer its obstinate 
little track; let its evil passions embroil the body politic, stifle and 
obstruct commerce, suppress thought and intelligence, exasperate 
the heart and turn its holy aspirations to malevolence, fail in the 
lowest requirements of government to give security to property and 
life—let it do all this for a little more. It is but fulfilling its 
destiny. Its cup is already flowing over, but it does not, as it 
cannot, resist the progress which encircles it. Italia nunquam ne 
reponat. It is a question which will not wait to be answered even 


410 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


by the Emperor, who sanctions and maintains this state of things. The 
progress of events will be too strong even for him, and Italy and 
civilization will recover their rights.”— Times. 

“His friends and neighbours are dethroned; the son of the King 
who sheltered him from [Republican violence is now a refugee in his 
capital; his most powerful ally is not only crippled, but is tampering 
with civil and religious liberty; his other Imperial supporter has talcen 
to preaching resignation and self-denial; his dominions are all but lost, 
and the King of Piedmont, now the King of Italy, is actually pro¬ 
posing to him the formal abandonment of all his temporalities, on 
conditions honourable indeed, but galling enough to one who cannot 
bear to break with the past. That Belgium, with all her Catholic 
devotion, should see all this unmoved, or, if not unmoved, should 
prefer political expediency to her spiritual allegiance—Italy to him¬ 
self—may well seem to him a sign of the evil times which are coming 
on the Church.” 

“ The Papacy has long ceased to be self-supporting; in 1831 and 
1848, a struggle arose between Austria and Prance, as to which of 
these two Powers was to support the Papacy, for the especial benefit 
of the supporter—as to which of them was to exploiter the Papacy. 
The contest now' lies between Italy and France, between that Italy 
which only exists by the grace of France , and that France which has, 
willingly or unwillingly, granted Italy all her wishes, always with a 
most distinct reservation on this same subject of the Papacy.”— 
French Taper. 

“ The occupation is not meant to be eternal. It is the interest and 
the ivish of the French Government that that occupation should cease, for 

raises discontent among the Liberal party, who see with regret the 
French flag standing in the way of the reconstitution of Italy; it is 
displeasing to the reactionary party, because they are not satisfied 
with this precarious protection, and would wish the Papacy to be 
restored to the possession of all its former teritories. It does not 
satisfy the Holy Father, because he mistrusts the French, wdiose 
protection he is compelled to accept, and would gladly be rid of 
them.”— Liberal Taper. 

“Pius IX. hates Napoleon ; he w'ould twenty times have appealed 
to the Catholic world to rise and overthrow" the French Empire— 
these are the very words—had it not been for Antonelli, who by 
main force prevented this mere outbreak of powerless insanity. Do 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


411 


you think that the Emperor can he ignorant of these facts, or that, 
knowing them, he can feel any tenderness for Pius IX., head of 
the Ultramontane-Legitimist party, which is plotting against his 
crown?” 

“ The Papal Government and the dethroned King of Naples have 
hoped to weaken the Italian Kingdom by exciting a civil war, and 
by the connivance of France they have partially succeeded, to the 
great joy of Austria, who now takes courage in dealing with her 
own subjects. But the plot has been exposed, and the conscience of 
mankind has revolted against the iniquity. The horrors which are 
passing in Southern Italy force the French Emperor to rebuke those 
who abet them, and it may be that the Papacy will expiate by the 
loss of its temporal possessions the unscrupulous aid it has given to 
a congenial tyranny.” 

u Tlie determination seems to continue unabated of retaining her 
troops at Pome, refusing the Italian Kingdom the means of com¬ 
pleting the incorporation of its southern provinces, and keeping 
from the Poman people that of which they are naturally most 
desirous—the restriction of the Papal temporal power, and the 
prevention of the support so scandalously given to the worst 
criminals of Naples. Nor can the friends of Italy in France greatly 
wonder if the belief should daily gain strength that there is a 
design formed to restrict within as narrow limits as possible the 
power of her Southern neighbour .”—Lord Brougham. 

“Wo should not have thought that the Emperor and the Pope 
were at this moment exactly on terms for the asking and receiving 
of favours, but we are entirely mistaken, for not only has the Pope 
made the Archbishop a Cardinal, but he has sent Monsignor Meglia, 
Apostolic Ab-Legate, to convey, in a bandbox of enormous dimen¬ 
sions, the red hat itself, that the Emperor of the French may place 
it on the head of the new dignitary of the Church with his own 
Imperial hands.” 

“The Emperor Napoleon had expressed an opinion that the 
moment was not favourable for a solution of the Koman question, 
and that solution was necessarily adjourned.” 

“ Our firmest hope is in the tutelary and indefatigable hand of 
your Majesty. Your filial affection for a sacred cause which you do 
not confound with that of the intrigues which borrow its mask has 
been unceasingly remarked in the defence and maintenance of the 


412 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


temporal power of tlie Sovereign Pontiff. And the Senate do not 
hesitate to give their full adhesion to all the acts of your frank, 
moderate, and persevering policy. For the future, we shall continue 
to place our confidence in the Monarch who covers the Papacy 
with the French flag, who has assisted at its trials, and who lias 
constituted himself the most vigilant and most faithful guardian of 
Pome and of the Pontifical throne.” 

11 The National Poman Committee has posted up bills in Pome, 
declaring that the issue of Poman Consols, effected by the Pontifical 
Government, after the 27th of March, 1861, would never be recog¬ 
nised by the Italian Government, as from the moment the Italian 
Parliament declared Pome to be the capital of Italy the temporal 
power of the Pope legally terminated.” 

We thus see what an interminable and inextricable confusion the 
vacillation, treachery, and selfishness of the Man of December has 
introduced into the affairs and arrangements of Italy, and especially 
into the patrimony and prospects of the Papal see. 

The following adaptation of a celebrated passage in Pacine was 
printed some years ago, to pourtray the ambiguous and anomalous 
relations between Ilis Holiness and his “ Eldest Son ” :— 

PIE IX. ET NAPOLEON III.—DIALOGUE TILE DE RACINE. 

Pie IX. 

Approchez-vous, mon fils, et prenez votre place. 

On vent sur vos soup cons quc je vous satisfasse. 

J’ignore de quel crime on a pu me noircir, 

De tous ceux que j’ai faits jc veux vous eclaircir. 

Vous regnez : vous savez combien votre naissance 
Entre 1’Empire et vous avoit mis do distance * 

Les droits par vos soldats forcement consacres, 

Etoient meme sans moi d’inutiles degres. 

De tous les gens dc bien la disgrace future 
Des coours fibres et francs excita le murmurc. 

Vos promesses aux uns eblouirent les yeux, 

L’exil 'vous delivra des plus seditieux ; 

Des illustres Bourbons votre crainte eternelle 
Eloigna du pouvoir tous ceux de qui le zele, 

Engagd des long-temps a suivre leur destin, 

Pouvoit du trone encor leur rouvrir le chemin. 

* Toutes les puissances Europeennes etaicnt convenues de ne jamais reconnaitre 
Pautorite des Bonapartes en France. 





OUGHT TRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


413 


Pour amis, je clioisis moi-memo dans ma suite 
Ceux a qui yous voulicz qu’on livrat ma couduite— 
Quoiqu’on vous vit nommer, par un plausible choix 
Des saints prelats, quo Pome honorait de sa voix, 

La brigue cst votre oracle, ct non la renommee— 

On mit dans le senat, les tribunaux, 1’arm(5c 
Des parasites vils, des renegats bourrus, 

Qui depuis—Pome alors leur croyoit des yertus.' 

Du tresor national epuissant les richesses, 

Votre main sans remords repandoit les largesses. 

Les spectacles, les dons, invineibles appas, 

Vous attiroient les coeurs du peuple et des soldats, 

Qui d’ailleurs, revcillant leur tendresse premiere, 

Aimoient en vous celui qui vous fut plus que pere. 

Tandis que vos suppots alloient secretement 
De l’armee en vos mains exiger le serment, 

Qu’en vainqueur vous marchiez, conduit sous mes auspices, 
Dans Pome les autels fumaient de sacrifices. 

Par mes orclres expres tout le peuple excite 
Du nouvel Empereur demandoit la sante. 

Mais quand des legions l’entiere obeissance 
Avoit de votre empire affermi la puissance, 

On vous vit; et le peuple, indigne de son sort, 

Eut a choisir l’exil, l’esclavage, ou la mort. 

C’cst le sincere aveu qui je voulois vous faire ; 

Voila tous mes forfaits. En voici la salaire : 

Du fruit de tant de soins sans re vers jouissant, 

Vous avez quelque temps paru reconnaissant, 

Mais, lasse d’un respect qui vous genoit peut-etre, 

Vous affectez souvent de ne plus me connoitre. 

Cavour, adroitement aigrissant vos soup 9 ons, 

De l’infidelite vous taiya les le 9 ons. 

Et lorsque, vos mepris excitant nos murmures, 

Je vous ai demande raison de tant d’injures 
(Seul recours d’un ingrat qui sc voit confondu), 

Par de nouveaux affronts vous m’avez repondu. 

Victor sur mes Etats porte ses mains bardies, 

Et lorsque, convaincu de tant de perfidies, 

Vous deviez ne me voir que pour les expier. 

C’est vous qui m’ordonnez de me justifier. 

Louis Napoleon. 

Je me souviens toujours que je vous dois 1’Empire ; 

Et sans vous fatiguer du soin dc le redire, 

Votre bonte, Saint-Pere, avec tranquillite 
Pouvoit se reposer sur ma fidelite. 




414 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Aussi bien ces soupfons, cos plaintes assidues 
Ont fait croire a tous ceux qui les ont entendues, 

Que jadis, j’ose ici yous le dire entre nous, 

Yous n’aviez sous mon noni travaille que pour vous. 

“ Tant d’honneurs, disoient-ils, et tant de deferences, 
Sont-ce de ses bienfaits de foibles recompenses ? 

Quel crime a done commis ce fils tant condamne ? 
Est-ce pour obeir que l’on l’a couronne ? 

N’est-il de son pouvoir que le depositaire ?” 

Non que, si j usque-la j’avois pu yous complaire, 

Je n’eusse pris plaisir a yous faire ceder 
Les Etats que yos cris sembloient redemandcr; 

Mais Rome veut un maitre, et deyenir maitresse * , 
Sans moi succombcroit bientbt votre foiblesse, 

Et le peuple Romain ne yoit pas, sans courroux, 
Porter par nos soldats leurs aigles deyant yous, 

Se plaignant qu’on fletrit par cet indigne usage 
Les beros dont encor elles portent l’image. 

Pie IX. 

Yous ne me trompez point. Je yois tous yos detours. 
Yous ctes un ing-rat, vous le futes toujours. 

I)es yos plus jeunes ans nos soins et nos tendresscs f 
N’ont arracbe de vous que de feintes caresses. 

Rien ne yous a pu vaincre; et votre durete 
Auroit du dans son cours arreter ma bonte. 

Avec ma liberte, que yous m’avez ravie, 

Si vous le souhaitez, prenez encor ma vie. 

Et puisse ebaque ami, par mon crime \ irrite, 

Me pardonner enfin cc qui m’a tant coute. 

Louis Napoleon. 

Ab! Saint-Pere, je yeux que ma reconnaissance 
- Desormais dans les cccurs grave votre pubsance; 

Et je beDis deja cette heureuse froideur 
Qui de notre amitid va rallumcr l’ardeur. 

Quoi que Merode ait fait, il suffit, je l’oublic ; 

Avec Antonelli je me reconcilie; 

Et quant a ces aigreurs—qui nous ont separes, 

Je yous fais notre arbitre et vous nous jugerez. 


* En devenant la capitale du royaume d’ltalie. 
t Cellos des Papes, des Cardinaux, et du Clerge. 

Celui d’ayoir reconnu, felicite, et fayorise Louis Napoleon. 






OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONATARTES? 


415 


En moi vous trouverez serviteur, Ills et frerc. 

Goyon, qu’on obcisse aux ordres de ma Mere.* 

The “ eldest son of the church ” is, of all the Pope’s children, the 
most ungrateful, the most undutiful, and the most unjust. His 
Holiness may be regarded as his puppet and his prisoner. The 
Man of December, by overturning, as an unprincipled and unpro¬ 
voked invader, the time-honoured equilibrium in Italy, aggrandised 
the King of Piedmont to such an extent as enabled him to take 
possession of a large share of the Papal dominions, whilst, at the 
same time, he prevents the spoiler from seizing the remainder, 
although his claim to each portion is either equally lawless or 
equally legitimate. Pius IX. being himself endued with a strong 
sense of honour and integrity, seems to have been credulous enough 
to have confided in the father of his godson— 

Tour moi, si par soi mcme on peut juger d’autrui, 

Ce que je sens en moi, je le presume en lui. 

Corneille. 

A word or a nod would have been as effectual in enforcing the 
restitution of what has been taken, as it has been adequate to 
prevent the seizure of what is left. There was a time when it might 
have been said— 

Etre allie de Rome, et s’en fame un appui, 

C’est l’uniqne moyen de regner aujourd’hui, 

Et c’est par la qu’on tient ses voisins en contrainte, 

Ses pcuples en repos, ses ennemis en crainte. 

Un prince est dans son trone ii jamais affermi, 

Quand il est honore du nom de son ami. 

Corneille. 

But to prove, by way of contrast, the abject state of dependence to 
which the Holy See has now been reduced, one question only 
requires to be asked and answered. Supposing the Pope were to 
say “ I wish that the French troops should be withdrawn, and 
Austrian and Spanish auxiliaries substituted in their stead, because 
I am convinced that had they garrisoned Pome at the time, they 
would have at once repelled the Piedmontese ‘brigands;’ and 
because I can repose greater confidence in their loyalty for the 

* L’Eglise, dont il se vante d’etre le fils aine. 


416 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


defence of my remaining dominions, than in the ‘ protector ’ who 
connived at the confiscation of what has been forcibly taken away.” 
The Man of December would have scornfully repudiated such a 
righteous and reasonable proposition. "What better title lias 
France, than Austria or Spain, to occupy Home? or interfere in 
the territorial arrangements of Italy ? Why did he allow the 
revolutionised districts to “ choose whom they would serve,” and 
withhold the same privilege from their Homan fellow-subjects ? 
And yet all the European powers stand aloof, and, as in every other 
case, allow him to do what he pleases —stat proratione voluntas ! If 
we saw these sovereigns consulting and honouring some potentate, 
pietate graven ac mentis (reason would that we should bear with 
them); but they are in such a pitiable and prostrate position, that 
whatever may be their secret murmurings or misgivings— 

Si forte virum qucm 

(some titled ambassador and accomplice of the Man of December), 

Conspexcre, silent, arrectisque auiibus adstant; 
llle regit dictis animos, ac pectora mnlcet. 

Virgil. 


X.— Mexico. 

Tiie triple alliance entered into by England, France, and Spain, in 
reference to Mexico, was infamous on the part of the Second of 
December, and infatuated as regards the two other powers, who, 
however, very wisely and warily withdrew from the transaction as 
soon as the real object of its principal instigator was detected and 
declared. It has been emphatically characterised as <£ An unjusti¬ 
fiable meddling, without any right, any interest, any cause, any 
pretext, which embarks us at the tail of a few refugees, in a contest 
without issue .”—(Daily News .) 

“ France feels itself gliding down a dangerous incline towards 
unlimited expenses and objectless com plications. ’ ’— lb . 

“From the beginning the French Government has been pursuing 
ends in direct antagonism with the sense in which it knew that the 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


417 


British Government had signed tho treaty of London. It is impos¬ 
sible not to see that the French troops were, in the first instance, 
sent to Mexico with no less a purpose than that of overturning the 
existing Government, and setting up another in its place .”—Daily 
News. 

u Almonte is a person honoured with the good will of the Emperor. 
The French flag never rejects the exiles of any country, our 
victims excepted .”—French Paper. 

He, the Man of December seems to have adopted (so far as his 
personal conduct is concerned) a very startling interpretation of the 
maxim £ ‘ hum an i nihil a me alien uni puto.” I consider myself 
entitled to interfere with the concerns of every human being; to 
accomplish, throughout the entire world, every object which self- 
interest or caprice may suggest; to adopt any means, whether law- 
fid or unprincipled. 

Dovo forza non val, giunga l’inganno. 

Metastasio. 

“I am set over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, 
and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and 
plant” (Jer. i. 10); to destroy every stately oak, and plant Bona- 
partist thorns and thistles in its stead. Cochin China, as well as 
Mexico, has been wantonly aggrieved and plundered; nay, even 
compelled to admit an alien and arrogant colony, by which the 
independence and happiness of the entire empire, will ere, long be 
attacked and annihilated, and all this under the pretence of 
humanity and justice. “ Un tyran, memo dans sa fureur, s’efforce 
de se croire juste.”— Marmontel. 

It was an act of aggressive folly to enter into a costly undertaking 
for the purpose of enforcing the ostensible claims of certain greedy 
and grasping speculators, who, for the sake of an exorbitant interest, 
had risked their money on very questionable security, and should have 
been left to make good their demands before the Mexican tribunals 
and authorities, without putting their respective Governments to an 
enormous expense for enforcing an agreement which they had not 
sanctioned or guaranteed. It would have even been cheaper and 
more prudent (though quite preposterous and uncalled for) to have 
paid the amount of these loans out of the public exchequer, than 
to have embarked in an aggressive and absurd invasion of a country 

D D 


418 QUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BON AT ARTE S ? 

with which wo were at peace. It is evident, that the cabinets of 
London and Madrid were the dupes, and would soon have been the 
victims, of Bonapartist intrigue and ambition. 

“It seems an unprofitable speculation to recover some millions of 
francs at the cost of two or three times the number of pounds 
sterling. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“England and Spain—who were involved in the earlier stages of 
the Mexican expedition—were happily released, by the development 
of the French Emperor’s more ambitious views, from any further 
participation in the enterprise.”— lb. 

“There is not a straight line in the whole chart of French policy 
in this matter.”— lb. 

“The hon. gentleman who had just sat down had hit upon the 
real weak point of the case, when he said that Her Majesty’s Govern- 
ment had made a convention with France without knowing some¬ 
thing of the claims, wliich she was likely to put forward; claims, as 
they now knew, of so monstrous a hind that no Government that had a 
regard for its own honour could venture to enforce them. Ilis hon. 
friend, the Under-Secretary, charged the noble lord with a violation 
of good taste in commenting upon the conduct of the French Govern¬ 
ment ; but his hon. friend, in what he stated a few moments after¬ 
wards, went on to justify something like strong language on the part 
of the noble lord, for he described the state of things in Mexico as 
most unsatisfactory.”— Speech in the House of Commons. 

‘ ‘ A review of the proceedings of the French in the matter of the 
Mexican expedition will go far, we think, to prove that Napoleon has 
violated all his assurances to this Government upon that subject. An 
immense number of troops, not less than from 60,000 to 80,000, are 
either in Mexico or en route for that country. A fleet of French 
iron-clads is now in the Gulf of Mexico, and our advices from Paris 
prove that Napoleon intends making a prolonged occupation of the country 
he is invading. Of course, when he conquers Mexico, he will usurp 
the Government of the captured people. Will not that be a direct 
violation of all the assurances made by France to our Government ? 
Why is Napoleon sending over materials for railroads; and why is 
he inviting, as we are aware he is doing, emigration to Mexico, 
unless he intends holding the country ? He must hold it, as before 
lie will have conquered the Mexican people, he will have spent so 
much treasure upon the expedition that the whole resources of that 


OUGHT FRANCE TO 'WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


419 


unfortunate country would fall short of the demands he will make 
for repayment. ’ ’— Kinglake. 

“We have had, in the course of this year, a great and fortunate 
escape. I allude to the expedition to Mexico. There were certain 
money demands which this country, Spain, and France had against 
Mexico, and these three states agreed to go there together and 
enforce them. Well, gentlemen, the three states sent out together 
an expedition, hut no sooner did that expedition arrive on the coast 
of Mexico, than it appeared that France had enormously exaggerated her 
claims , and that instead of seeldng just money demands from the Govern¬ 
ment of Mexico , she was intent upon establishing there a monarchy , and 
setting up there a monarch of her oxen choice. It appeared that a gentle¬ 
man, not high in the diplomatic service, hut, as it fortunately 
happened, a man of high courage and great honour, immediately 
detected this wicked fraud on the part of France. Spain did the 
like, and the result was that France was left alone to carry out her 
base intentions. That was no more than justice, and I rejoice to 
say that justice has had its reward, because it seems that the terrible 
nature of the Mexican climate, which had not been known before, is 
now well known to the Emperor of the French. I think you will 
agree with me that it is a good subject for congratulation that we are now 
free from everything connected with that affair .”— Kinglake. 

The prompt and praiseworthy secession of Spain from this unhal¬ 
lowed and untoward conspiracy, has elicited the indignation of the 
disappointed and discouraged Decemberists. 

“ ‘The soldiers of the Emperor,’ ” says the Spanish Commander, 

‘ remain in this country to establish a throne for the Arch-Duke 
Maximilian.’ The General thinks this is ‘madness,’ and perhaps 
the act will not bo regarded in this country as one of wisdom.”— 
Times. 

“M. Billaut, in his official account of the transaction during the 
debates on the Address, referred with unusual asperity to the con¬ 
duct of the Spanish General; and the Emperor himself betrayed an 
unusual want of temper and prudence in the reproof which he after¬ 
wards inflicted on the Spanish Ambassador .”—Saturday Review. 

“ Marshal O’Donnell spoke out more boldly than his colleagues in 
disapproving the lengths to which France is carrying her armed 
intervention ; but ho laid the blame of it upon the Mexican intriguer 

d d 2 


420 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Almonte, by whose wily tales the French generals had been misled. 
He stated that, when the combined expedition was agreed to by the 
three Governments of England, France, and Spain, their intention 
was only to occupy Yera Cruz and San Juan de Ulloa for a short 
time, as a material guarantee for the compensation which they had 
demanded for the outrages on European persons and property. The 
debate resulted in a vote of the Senate favourable to the policy of 
the Government. 

“In Cochin-China, after the glorious expeditions of Bien-Hoa, 
Baria, Ving-Luong, and the capture of Poulo-Condor, the Govern¬ 
ment of Hue has been obliged to sign a peace which cedes to France 
the three fertile provinces of Bien-Hoa, Saigon, and Mitho, with the 
island of Poulo-Condor, and which secures for humanity and religion 
those rights, so long misconstrued, that we went to vindicate in con¬ 
cert with Spain. At the present day organisation is going on in 
place of war. To facilitate the re-establishment of peace and order, 
the Ministers of the Emperor of Annam who signed the treaty of 
Saigon, have been placed at the head of the administration of tlio 
provinces that border on our territory; hitherto we have only had 
reason for satisfaction at their conduct towards us; but we must not 
dissemble the circumstance that our conquest and our pacification are of 
too recent date to allow us to consider our domination as definitively 
accepted by the former possessors of those rich countries.”—Man of 
December. 

“ The Moniteur of this morning publishes news from Cochin China 
to the 1st January, confirming the statement that the insurrectional 
movement of the natives had been speedily suppressed. Admiral 
Bonard did not doubt that a vigorous suppression of the insurrection 
would have an influence upon the Government at Hue, favourable to 
the maintenance of peace.” 

The Days of this evening says:— 

“An insurrection broke out in Cochin China on the 17th of 
December last. 

“ The natives attacked the French at Saigon. The enemy, being 
twenty times more numerous than the small expeditionary corps, 
succeeded in penetrating into the interior of the fort, but were sub¬ 
sequently energetically repulsed. 

“At some points the combat was hand-to-hand, and not a man 
remained unwounded. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


421 


u The Annamites fought with incredible boldness. They left a num¬ 
ber of killed on the field, and more that 2,000 prisoners. 

“ The greater part of their wounded remained in the hands of the 
French, and the Annamites received a good lesson .” 

The Patrie has the following additional news:— 

“On the 27th of December, the Cochin Chinese attacked Fort 
Mytho, but were repulsed, with 225 killed.” 

Is this the way in which the Man of December carries out his own 
principle of allowing nations to choose their own Govercnent ? The 
Annamites “have received a good lesson” to abhor their perfidious 
and cruel oppressor. The word “ scoundrel ” should be effaced from 
Johnson’s Dictionary, and “ scelerat” from that of the French 
academy, if the perpetrator of such unprovoked and cowardly out¬ 
rages on the first principles of humanity and justice is to claim 
exemption from either. 

In France itself, these desperate and delusive manoeuvres, which 
are chiefly intended to divert its attention from its own debased 
and degraded condition, are by no means looked upon with a 
favourable eye. 

“ The army of France should not be rashly engaged in undefined 
and adventurous expeditions; and neither our interests nor our 
principles require of us ‘ to go and see what sort of Government the 
Mexican people desire.’ ”— French Liberal Organ. 

“No act of the Emperor, since the commencement of his reign, 
has awakened more anxiety and alarm among French capitalists 
than the razzia upon Mexico.”— Daily News. 

“ One of the most insane ends that ever crossed the brain of a 
statesman. ’ ’— Presse. 

“Our policy of non-intervention was departed from at a moment’s 
notice, and on the slightest grounds.”— lb. 

‘ 1 The Emperor must either come away soon, and practically 
acknowledge that his allies were in the right, or he must continue 
the war, send out re-inforcements after re-inforcements, incur a vast 
expense, disgust his Ministers, his Parliament, and even his army, 
and ultimately engage France in war with America.”— Daily News, 
1862. 

“America will not tolerate the establishment of any European 
Government on this continent, but insist upon the enforcement of 
the Monroe doctrine to its fullest extont.”— New York Meeting. 


422 OUGHT FEANCE TO WOESHIP THE BONAPAETES ? 

“ The expedition to Mexico is bringing down a storm of unpopu¬ 
larity, which I do not remember any foreign question to have excited 
since the establishment of the Empire .”—Morning Herald , 1862. 

“France, singlehanded, has undertaken to build up a throne for 
Maximilian.’ ’— Op inion Nationale. 

“It is remarkable that the enterprise, although it savours of 
aggression and conquest, is unpopular with all parties in France, 
except with the busy Ultramontanes .”—Liberal Paper. 

“Not only with the people, but also with the army, the Mexican 
war is, you may depend, at present in the highest degree unpopular.” 
—Ib. 

“ The last proclamation of General Forey to the inhabitants of 
Cordova is admirable. ‘We have come,’ says he, ‘to see what 
Government you would prefer.’ Is this, then, the sole motive for 
spending so many millions and sacrificing so many hundreds of men ? 
Was ever such an important enterprise undertaken with such a futile 
motive? And does the Government think that the parents and 
widows of those unfortunate soldiers who have left their bones to 
bleach in that distant land, and those who have been taxed to the 
uttermost to enable the Government to carry out this expedition will 
be satisfied with so meagre an explanation? This is decidedly 
making game of the public .”—French Paper. 

“We will not compare the French Republic to the Mexican Re¬ 
public. We make every allowance for the difference between the 
two people and the two situations. But this allowance once made—- 
the French people placed very high, and the Mexican people very 
low—there will remain a pretty strong resemblance between the 
two. We have the appearance of wishing to impose happiness on 
the Mexicans, when we never permitted anybody to render the same 
service to us; and, whatever be said or done, this contradiction is 
not trifling.”— Ib. 

“France, however, is probably thinking of herself as well as of 
Mexico. Though she does ‘go to war for an idea,’ she may be 
expected to argue that, if French troops and French money are 
expended in the expedition to Mexico, France may reasonably calcu¬ 
late on the profit as well as the glory of the enterprise.”— Times. 

“With regard to Mexico the feeling is more marked and more 
general, and we are told that the Chamber may go so far as to 
convey, as directly as it can, its disapproval of the military expedi- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


423 


tion to that country. The burden on the finances involved in it, as 
well as the indefinite duration of a war carried on at such a distance, 
renders it decidedly unpopular. Many Deputies, and even a few 
Senators, speak strongly on both subjects; but I confess I have 
doubts whether, on either point, any bold language will be held, 
particularly by the Deputies. The general elections are too close at 
hand, and few, beyond the well-known ‘ five,’ would risk their seats 
by direct opposition to the (government.” 

“ At present, it is more difficult to foresee any method by which 
they can honourably retire from their enterprise .”—Saturday Review. 

The conquest of Mexico appears to be attended with greater diffi¬ 
culties than were anticipated; and the invaders are regarded by all 
parties with horror, excepting those bigoted and bloodthirsty exiles, 
who were driven from the country by public indignation. 

“ The French army in Mexico is so much weakened by the fevers 
which infest that clime, that General Forey must wait for additional 
reinforcements of 10,000 men, or 6,000 at least, before he can renew 
the campaign. His convoys are much harassed by guerilla attacks. 
He has no chance of making his triumphal entry into the capital for 
some weeks to come .”—Saturday Review. 

“ It is clear that there was some exaggeration in the accounts of 
the reception they met with, for certainly the spirit that shows itself 
by assassinating and withholding provisions from people who come 
to liberate you is a strange sort of enthusiasm. Of the rule of 
Juarez or of his predecessors there can be but one opinion. It is 
probable that he has in the country many partisans as well as com¬ 
petitors; but to tell people, as all the Paris papers have told us, 
that all Mexico was impatiently awaiting the arrival of the liberators 
to fall down before them, is a little too extravagant, and tempts one 
to reject most of the stories about the love for the French and hatred 
against the others. 

“ The other journals do not share the enthusiasm of the officials. 
‘It is on patriotic grounds,’ says the Temps, ‘that we should deplore 
seeing the Government persist in the tone which seems indicated by 
the late incident.’ ”— Times. 

“ The conquest of Mexico is likely to turn out a more costly under¬ 
taking than the Emperor imagined when he first listened to the 
‘ flattering tale ’ of the impatience with which the Mexicans were 


424 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 

waiting to rush into the arms of their liberators. His hopes havo 
yet to be realised; and, if we may trust what is said about the 
information given by General Lorencez since his return to Paris, it 
is to be feared that some time will pass before that conquest is 
effected. After all the treasure, and the fearful loss of life, not so 
much from the bullets of the enemy as by the deadly climate of 
Vera Cruz, it now appears that General Forey, the new Commander- 
in-Chief, will not be in a position to re-open the campaign before the 
end of January, for additional reinforcements, amounting to 10,000 
men, are declared to be indispensable to success.” 

“It is believed in Paris that the health of the army in Mexico is 
very unsatisfactory, and the otherwise unaccountable immobility of 
General Forey certainly confirms the report. It is also stated— 
but this requires corroboration—that the Federal Government has 
demanded an explicit declaration of the Emperor’s intentions in 
Mexico, and of the meaning of his despatch to General Forey.” 

“A special despatch to the New York Times says: ‘Official infor¬ 
mation has reached Washington that the condition of the French 
army of invasion is considered critical, its ranks are being thinned 
by siclmoss and the want of wholesome food. It has been said that 
agents have been sent to this country to obtain supplies, the furnish¬ 
ing of which has been protested against by the Mexican Minister. 
It is understood, however, that Secretary Seward declines to inter¬ 
fere.” 

How many humble but once happy families, in every district 
throughout France, have reason to curse the day on which the Man 
of December was born, at the shrine of whose insatiable ambition 
their children have been sacrificed in the flower of their age ! 

L’un des trois jouven ceaux 
Se noya des le port, allant a l’Amerique— 

L’autre, afin dc monter aux grandes dignites, 

Dans lcs emplois de Mars attaquant la Mexique, 

Tar un coup emprevu vit ses jours cmportes— 

Lo troisieme tomha d’un arbre 
Tacbant cn vain de s’y cacher,* 

El pleures du viellard, il grava sur leur marbre 
Ce que je viens dc raconter. 

La Fontaine. 


* When the Decemberist functionaries came to force him to join a regiment. 





OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSIIir THE BONAPARTES? 


425 


Ils ne se piquent point du devoir fanatique 
Du servir de victime au pouvoir despotique, 

Ni du zele insense de courir au trepas 
Pour venger un tyran qui ne les connait pas. 

Voltaire. 

“ A variety of false reports are in circulation concerning the 
Fronch army in Mexico. Wliat is true is this:—General Forey was 
not able to advance so soon as he expected, as he found that he must 
carry with him every description of provisions for his men, and for 
a campaign which may last two months. The Mexicans have cleared 
the line of march of cattle and vegetable food, and prevented all 
native traffic and intercourse with the French forces. It has resulted 
that additional provisions, carts, and 2,500 mules had to be collected 
in Vera Cruz. No doubt the French will possess the city of Mexico, 
but the campaign is expected to be a longer, more difficult, and more 
expensive one than was originally contemplated. No reinforcements 
were asked for in the latest despatches. M. Favre thought, consider¬ 
ing the circumstances of the Jeeker affair, no astonishment could be 
felt at the French ultimatum having caused the withdrawal of England 
and Spain. He disavowed, in the name of principle and international 
law, the war against Mexico, and said that it would always be unfor¬ 
tunate, even after the taking of the city of Mexico, for Juarez would 
continue the war in the French provinces. To get to Orizaba had 
already cost 104,000,000 francs, and to go further than Mexico the 
treasure of France would not suffice. M. Favre concluded by saying 
that he could not associate himself with a war undertaken upon 
mendacious information. 

‘ ‘ Although the French may succeed in the field, they may have 
before them a protracted struggle with desperate bands, not strong 
enough to fight, but strong enough to distract the country; 
capitalists may shrink from the hazard of laying out their money 
there; the climate may damp the energies of the conquerors; 
France may grow peevish, restless, and irritated; and the Emperor 
may then have to try the sharp and strong remedy of a European 
war .”—Saturday Review. 

“ The Church party in Mexico—a party who, if he must use a 
strong term, were the greatest ruffians, and who had been guilty of 
the most horrible outrages upon civilisation—gathered round General 
Almonte in his attempt to establish monarchy; but when the French 


426 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 




advanced into tlio country, they found that the warnings which had 
been given them were perfectly true, and that no monarchical party 
really existed there. The French General himself, with great frank¬ 
ness, admitted this, avowing that if he had dreamt there was no 
party in favour of monarchy, he would not have advanced into the 
midst of a hostile country .”—Liberal Paper. 

11 In consequence of those threats the inhabitants fled at our 
approach. The other towns and villages through which our troops 
passed were also abandoned from the same cause. At Boca del 
Potreru, at Tolomeo, and at Pasco de Avigas not a single inhabitant 
was found .”—French Paper. 

“Pasquin looks on complacently, and takes a cheerful view of 
things, as is evident from one of his most recent pleasantries. ‘ The 
Italian war,’ he says, ‘ cost three Ducati, and the Mexican invasion 
will be more expensive—it is calculated that it will cost a Napoleon.” 
— Times. 

“We see, by sad experience, how precarious is the lot of a branch 
of manufacture which is compelled to procure its raw material in a 
single market, all the vicissitudes of which it has to bear .”—French 
Paper. 

11 As Mexico has no cotton to export, the bearing of the argument 
is not altogether obvious, unless General Forey is to compel the 
regenerated Government to provide raw material for the mills of 
Bouen .”—Saturday Review. 

It is perfectly clear, that, under the usual guise of philanthropic 
and praiseworthy objects, the Man of December’s real design is to 
establish, at all hazards, Bonapartist supremacy, to place, if pos¬ 
sible, some member of his mushroom dynasty, or some foreign vassal 
on the throne, and that freedom of choice was, of course, to be a 
farce carried out by violence and the fraudulent expedient of 
universal suffrage. 

Instrument dangereux dans les mains d’un fripon. 

Voltaire. 

“ When we shall have reached the city of Mexico, it is to be 
desired that the principal persons of all political shades who shall 
have embraced our cause, should come to an understanding with you 
to organise a Provisional Government. The Government will submit 
to the Mexican people the question of the political regime which is to 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


427 


be definitively established. An Assembly will be afterwards elected 
according so the Mexican laws. 

“You will aid the new Government to introduce into the Admi¬ 
nistration, and particularly into the finances, that regularity of which 
France offers the best model. For that purpose capable men will he 
sent to second its new organisation. 

“The object to be attained is not to impose on the Mexicans 
a form of Government which would be obnoxious, but to assist 
them in their efforts to establish, according to their own wishes, 
a Government which may have a chance of stability, and can 
secure to France the settlement of the mjuries of which she has to 
complain. 

“It fohows, as a matter of course, that, if the Mexicans prefer a 
monarchy, it is for the interest of France to support them in that 
path.”— Man of December. 

“ Whatever is done in Mexico must, on Imperialist and Democratic 
principles, be consecrated by a vote of the people. When the ballot- 
boxes have been opened, and * Yes ’ to some proposition of the French 
Commander is found to prevail—as we may be pretty sine, from our 
experience of ballot-boxes, that it will prevail—then everything that 
has existed in Mexico up to the day of polling will be looked upon 
as having legitimately come to an end. All the operations of the 
French armies may then be considered as the preface to an election. 
To insure an undoubted majority for whatever form of Government 
the Emperor may decide upon, is the object of every military and 
political measure. For that the Zouave charges, for that the emissary 
intrigues, for that the General ‘ receives with kindness all comers ’ 
and ‘ shows great deference for religion.’ At the outset, the bayonet 
is the most effectual weapon. The army must fight its way to 
Mexico, and until the city is in their hands, it is of little use to think 
of politics.” 

“ To restore a Monarchy on that Republican ground, to plant a 
Latin throne as a barrier to the ambitious Anglo-Saxon democrats of 
the North, is his great scheme. 1 If the Mexicans prefer a Monarchy, 
it is for the interest of France to support them in that path.’ Such 
is his announcement, and nothing is more likely than that when 
the French General issues his Conge cVFlire he will be ready with 
some young Prince recommended by his Majesty as a more fitting 
ruler than a half-caste President.” 


428 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


II n’a pas sur son front place le diademe— 

Mais, sous un autre nom, n’est il pas Eoi lui mcme ? 

Voltaire. 

11 When the dissolution of the alHance was known in Paris, 
General Lorencez was ordered to march upon Mexico, for the pur¬ 
pose of enabling the nation to decide on the form of Government 
which it might prefer. The practical freedom of choice was illus¬ 
trated by the presence of Almonte at he ad-quarters, and by the 
exclusion of the existing Government from the list of alternative 
solutions.” 

“The French have largely increased their stake in the adventure, 
and are challenging fortune with unflinching resolution. They 
stand to win or lose a good deal. Instead of a moderate contingent, 
they have now a large army in Mexico, and the demand for rein¬ 
forcements has been heavy and incessant. They have suffered 
terribly from the fever of the country, they have been disappointed 
in their estimate of the popular feeling, and, though they are 
naturally not inclined to recede, they find the difficulties of advancing 
exceedingly dangerous.”— Times. 

u She may probably convert Mexico into a French dependency, 
and the world will certainly not suffer from the change ; but the 
cost will be immense, the problem embarrassing, and even the 
military work arduous, from the nature of the country and the 
deadly influence of the climate.”— II. 

“ The Mexican Congress is represented as patriotic, united, and 
determined, and we are introduced, in short, to the spectacle of a 
small but resolute nation fighting manfully for its liberties against 
an unprovoked invasion. We can only say that, if this transforma¬ 
tion has been accomplished, it is as much beyond comment as any 
other prodigy, but we must have further evidence before we can 
believe it.”— lb. 

“ Matters are not going on well with the expeditionary force ; the 
fleet has suffered greatly from yellow fever.”— Ih. 

“ Three thousand five hundred soldiers are leaving Cherbourg for 
Mexico; 1,600 are embarking at Algiers for the same destination, 
besides 300 Arabs for the baggage service. Agents have been 
beating up in all directions for the purchase of mules; it appears 
that no less than 15,000 of these useful animals are required. Some 
disappointment is felt at the little progress yet made by General 


OTTCIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


429 


Eorey, certainly not through his fault, for the circumstances are 
beyond his control.”— St. James’s Chronicle. 

The following proclamation, ascribed to President Juarez, though 
probably not authentic, seems to exhibit an accurate picture of the 
feelings which the Mexicans must entertain towards their rapacious 
and ruthless invader :— 

“Mexicans,—Your consciences must acquit you of the charge 
of having ever interfered in the internal affairs of European nations, 
or affording to them any ground for presuming to intermeddle with 
yours. 

“We have seen in Spain a profligate Court, and a succession of 
vile and venal ministers, exciting towards that country a general 
feeling of contemptuous indignation—while their severe and shameful 
persecutions, only worthy of the middle ages, have disgraced and 
desecrated the Catholic religion which they hold in common with 
ourselves. 

“ Great Britain, too, is distracted and degraded by reckless and 
rapacious politicians, who have acquired their power and maintained 
their influence by an unexampled dereliction from the principles 
which they professed, having at their head an individual who, not¬ 
withstanding the infirmities of age, clings to office with a tenacity 
which even youth would scarcely extenuate; whilst men of delicate 
and dignified minds would long since have withdrawn from the 
political arena. 

“We have sympathised with the two great nations which are 
involved in so much ignominy from these lamentable causes, but 
have scrupulously avoided to take any measures, or even utter any 
expostulations, to assist in obtaining the redress which these op¬ 
pressed peoples must desire ; and as their troops have spontaneously 
quitted our territories, we shall draw a charitable veil of forgiveness 
and oblivion over the past. 

“ But what shall we say of France, the state of which is, at this 
moment, more degraded and more deplorable than that of any other 
nation upon the face of the earth ? Subjugated, through carnage 
and cunning, by a foreign adventurer, of whose perjury and perfidy 
it has been the dupe and the victim—its resources recklessly squan¬ 
dered—its debt and taxation fearfully augmented—its privileges 
trampled under foot—its most obsequious and obnoxious citizens 


430 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


raised to the highest offices—its most virtuous and estimable states¬ 
men confined to obloquy or obscurity—its press less free than that of 
Turkey—its fleets and armies kept up on an enormous footing, as 
much to perpetuate its own thraldrom as to menace all other countries 
with insult or invasion—how can we help being animated with a just 
and generous indignation, when we find a people so circumstanced 
presuming to dictate to us, and insolently despatching a horde of 
sanguinary bandits, for the purpose of bringing us, directly or 
indirectly, under the same galling and grievous yoke to which they 
themselves have ignominiously succumbed ? 

“ Mexicans,—You have nobly responded to my appeal. Twenty 
thousand of the best and bravest among you have volunteered to 
avenge this affront, and to sail in a few days for France, in order to 
aid the oppressed inhabitants of that degenerate and down-trodden 
nation to recover their lost rights and liberties. I doubt not that 
when we reach either Toulon or Cherbourg, and display the anti- 
Corsican standard, you will find thousands of patriots, and even 
entire regiments of disaffected and disgusted soldiers ready to join 
you. As soon as your commander has effected a landing, and 
obtained possession of the city, he will issue the following pro¬ 
clamation :— 

“ Frenchmen,—Although we are foreigners, we come to you as 
friends. You sent troops to enslave our country : we requite you by 
despatching an army for the liberation of yours. The joy and 
gratitude with which you have, in such numbers, hailed our arrival 
and flocked to our standard, command our gratitude, admiration, 
and esteem; and we rely upon your cordial adoption of the terms 
which we propose, with your concurrence and approval, to carry 
out: — 

“ 1. Louis Charles Napoleon Bonaparte, formerly President, and 
now pretended Emperor of France, has ceased to reign. 

“2. The article of the Treaty of 1815, by which the Bonaparte 
family was declared incapable of exercising sovereign rights in 
France or elsewhere, is revived. 

“ 3. The Mexican Government abstains from employing any 
authority or influence over the French people, in regard to the form 
of Government which France may deem it proper to substitute for 
the present odious and oppressive despotism. 

“4. The present Chambers, which are composed almost ex- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


431 


elusively of the toad-eaters and tools of the Bonapartes, are dis¬ 
solved. 

“5. All such Frenchmen as occupied places in the public 
assemblies, which met between 1815 and 1848, are invited to meet, 
for the purpose of determining whether a monarchy or a republic 
shall be re-established, and in what form and under what conditions. 

“ 6. M. Bonaparte having borne (however unworthily) the Impe¬ 
rial title, shall be recognised as Emperor of Cayenne, and hold that 
district as an independent territory. 

“ 7. As experience has sufficiently attested that all the present 
civil and military adherents of M. Bonaparte are ready, at a moment’s 
notice, to change their Prince or their principles when their interest 
requires them so to do, their present claims and future destiny may 
be safely left to the determination of any Government, whether 
republican or monarchical, which the wisdom of the French people 
may devise, and in which (bo it what it may) they are sure imme¬ 
diately to acquiesce. 

(Signed) “Juarez, 

“ President of the Mexican Bepublic.” 

“Mexico, April 12, 1862.” 

It was not without alarm that I heard of a measure having been 
“ taken” by the Man of December “ in the interests of humanity, 
and which cannot give rise to the slightest criticism (of course not in 
France, where his worst actions must be commended, and the best 
deeds of all who do not submit to his ignominious thraldom, be 
condemned). I felt confident that this act, be it what it might, 
must be cruel, arbitrary, and oppressive; and so it turned out. 
Advantage was taken of the late Pacha of Egypt’s failing health to 
cajole or caress him into a nefarious compact, by which a number of 
helpless and hapless negroes are sacrified at the altar of unbridled 
and unprincipled ambition. 

“ The Inclependance of the 28th ult., and, I believe, the France, and 
one or two other French papers, received here two days ago, con¬ 
tained a statement that the Viceroy of Egypt had agreed to supply 
the French Government with a regiment of 1,000 negroes to serve 
with the French army in Mexico. 

“ It is said that the men are required to perform the rough work 
of the camps in Mexico, for which Europeans have been found 


432 OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

altogether unfitted, and which, it is asserted, the negroes, from 
being inured to the effects of a tropical climate, will be able to 
undertake with impunity. But no person , of course , expects that a 
single one of these unfortunate creatures will ever return to Egypt to give 
an account of his experiences in the New World. 

“ Four or five hundred of the Viceroy’s negro soldiers ‘had been 
brought down from Cairo in the usual manner, little suspecting what 
was going to befal them.’ A body of police was in readiness, a number 
of boatmen were impressed to assist in the operation of getting them 
on board, and while the inhabitants of Alexandria were asleep the 
stratagem was completed, and before morning the Seine was out of 
sight with her living freight. Of course, the motive for kidnapping 
them is that African labour is required for the hardest and least 
healthy work of the campaign in Mexico. In that deadly climate 
black skins are in great request, and the Emperor, who justly takes 
credit to himself for having suppressed the system of ‘ emigration ’ 
that was to liable to be mistaken for the slave trade, did not scruple 
to borrow a few hundred seasoned men from the Viceroy without 
asking questions. 

“ The English press has given vent to strange conjectures upon 
the despatch of a battalion of Egyptian troops to Mexico. Expe¬ 
rience having proved that negroes are not subject to the yellow 
fever, the Emperor has not (like England during the war in India) 
requested permission to enlist soldiers in Egypt, but the temporary 
loan to France of a regiment of 1,200 negroes. The Viceroy could 
only dispense with 350 men, who are destined to garrison Vera 
Cruz. The measure has , therefore , been tahen in the interests of humanity , 
and cannot give rise to the slightest criticism .” 

“We have an interest in the Republic of the United States being 
powerful and prosperous, but not that she should take possession of 
the whole gulf of Mexico, thence command the Antilles, as well as 
South America, and be the only dispenser of the products of the 
New World.”— Man of December. 

There is not on record a more gross and glaring instance of 
egoism and effrontery, even in the history of the Man of December, 
than his objecting to the interference of the United States in the 
affairs of Mexico, at the very moment when his own troops are 
assembled there by thousands to bring that unhappy country under 
his immediate or indirect control. It is to be hoped that the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


433 


American authorities will not tamely submit to bis arrogant and 
audacious dictation. The congress may, perhaps, summon sufficient 
courage to say, “We have an interest in France being powerful and 
prosperous. As she has thought proper to submit to despotic and 
disgraceful usurpation, we have no right and no desire to interfere 
with her internal government; but we must guard against the 
introduction of such a base and baleful system into the New World 
through military violence: we shall, therefore, send an army to 
Mexico to see fair play, and afford to the adherents of the existing 
republican institutions an opportunity to resist the insolent and 
insidious manoeuvres of an unscrupulous and unprincipled adver¬ 
sary.” American freedom can have no fellowship with Bonapartist 
serfs and satraps, “ Laisser le crime en paix, Jest s’en rend/re complice .” 
— Crebillon. 

“ Especially since the recent detection of an unjust, unprovoked, 
and ungenerous attempt of France to detach Texas from the 
Confederacy, and establish it as an independent Republic, under the 
protection of the Emperor.” — Times. 

“ In plain terms, Mr. Benjamin accuses the French Government 
of attempting to feel its way to a disruption of the Confederacy by 
inducing Texas to make a new secession. The reasons which, in the 
opinion of the Confederate Government, cause the Emperor to act 
thus are the desire to interpose a weak State between the Confede¬ 
racy and the French colony of Mexico, and his determination to 
obtain an independent source of cotton supply, like that which Eng¬ 
land possesses in India. Texas, when acknowledged as an inde¬ 
pendent republic, would, in effect, be as dependent on France, and 
as subservient to French interests, as a French colony.”— lb. 

“ There is one untoward circumstance which may more than com¬ 
pensate for the advantage thus gained. We allude to the recent 
publication of that letter in which the Emperor plainly avows his 
design of setting bounds to the aggrandizement of the Anglo-Saxon 
race and republican institutions on the American continent. We 
are much mistaken if the disclosure of an intention to extend to 
Mexico what American writers are pleased to call the ‘ peculiar 
political system ’ of Europe does not call forth an outburst of indig¬ 
nation which would prove fatal to any French proposal, even if it 
were otherwise satisfactory.”— lb. 

The “ bonheur cVautruV 7 is the pretext of the Man of December for 

E E 


434 


OUGHT FEANCE TO WOESHIP THE BONAPAETES ? 


liis criminal and costly invasion of Mexico, and for “ giving a good 
lesson” to Cochin China by massacre and marauding. The resist¬ 
ance offered by the brave inhabitants in both countries entitles them 
to the sympathy and respect of every friend to freedom, and 
nationality. As soon as those who have not been slaughtered by 
his murderous myrmidons are reduced and ruined, some Bonapartist 
incendiary will probably be sent to place, through the unhallowed 
and unprincipled juggle of universal suffrage, both countries being 
under his feet. 

It is equally deplorable and disgusting to read the honied profes¬ 
sions of amity and disinterestedness with which he has attempted to 
hoodwink an unoffending people, whom he has invaded under pre¬ 
tences the most flimsy and the most fallacious. It is evident that 
the Mexicans, though they may be eventually coerced, have, at all 
events, not been cajoled. The details as to their desperate resistance 
must increase our respect for the defenders, and our abhorrence for 
the invaders, of their liberty. 

“Mexicans, you will have been convinced by our acts of the truth 
and loyalty of our words, when I solemnly declare to you what I now 
repeat, that the soldiers of France are not here to impose a Govern¬ 
ment upon you; they have no other mission, be well persuaded, 
than (after having obtained by force from him who pretends to be 
the representative of the national will that just reparation of our 
grievances which we failed to obtain by negotiation) to consult the 
national will both as to the form of Government which it desires, and 
as to the choice of the men whom it may think most worthy and best 
fitted to secure order, combined with liberty at home and dignity 
and independence abroad. After having accomplished this task, 
the French army will be under the necessity of aiding your govern¬ 
ment to march resolutely in that path of progress which, in spite of 
those who misjudge Mexico, will lead you to become a people who 
need not envy any other.” 

“ The news received last night from Mexico is said to have damped 
the expectations which were entertained concerning the progress of 
General Forey’s corps d'armee. I am in a position to state that the 
Emperor, on receipt of the despatches which were transmitted to 
France by the Louisiane , sent without delay for the Ministers of 
War, Marine, and Finance. He had the preceding morning notified 
his intention of going last night to the Opera, but no sooner had the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


435 


conference of which I speak closed, than he sent word to the director 
that he had changed his mind, and preferred to spend the rest of 
the evening in privacy.’’ 

“ The Moniteur of yesterday published despatches from Yera Cruz 
to the 16th April, which include a report from General Forey of the 
operations at Puebla up to the 2nd of that month. This report 
generally confirms previous intelligence. The French, after six 
days spent in cutting trenches, captured Fort Xavier by assault, and 
got possession of several blocks of houses. There still, however, 
remains much work to do, and the losses so far are very heavy. 
The official report acknowledges that the Mexicans made a desperate 
resistance. In some cases it became impossible to take certain 
houses, and they were therefore blown up by the French, the de¬ 
fenders being buried in the ruins. Certainly the delusion that any 
considerable number of Mexicans are favourable to the French inter¬ 
vention must be pretty well dispelled by this time.” 

“ To the westward of Jalapa and Orizaba, it does not now appear 
that the French have hitherto made any advance. From both these 
places they have, for the last three months, been designing a march 
upon Puebla, near which fortress the two roads in question again 
converge. The explanation of this delay has been found, of course, 
in the inherent difficulties of the situation, which, we believe, in spito 
of the wildest inconsistencies of assertion, have never been exagge¬ 
rated .”—Morning Post. 

“ The impossibility of entering Puebla consisted in the barricades, 
eighteen feet thick with earth and stones, and in the fact that the 
Mexicans had filled the houses of the first line of parapets with 
earth. The Mexicans again occupy the Fort of San Xavier, which 
they are repairing.” 

“News from Mexico to the 31st of March contradicts the recent 
report of advantages gained by the French before Puebla, and states 
that the Mexicans were still in possession of the city, having repulsed 
all the assaults made by the French. 

“ Telegraphic despatches from San Francisco report from Puebla, 
on the 9th of April, that General Forey had captured most of the 
fortifications around the city, and surrounded those remaining, so 
that their capture, with the whole Mexican army, appeared immi¬ 
nent. Losses of French stated to be very heavy. M. Vernet de 
Laumiere, General of Artillery, was among the killed. 

E E 2 


436 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


‘‘ The following report is from General Comonfort, whose army is 
stationed between the capital and Puebla. This force consists of 
4,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry :— 

“ ‘An engagement took place on the 15th April between the 
French forces and a portion of my army, in which the former were 
completely routed, leaving in our hands 500 head of cattle, mules, 
horses, and ammunition.’ 

“ The different States are raising regiments for the war, which 
has now become so popular throughout Mexico, that all able to bear 
arms are flocking to assist in repelling the invader. The siege of 
Puebla will be known in Europe by the character of an expedition 
which has been changed into a war of devastation. 

“ The French bad two further conflicts with the Mexicans, in the 
first of which the Mexicans held their ground, and in the second 
remained masters of the field, capturing 150 Zouaves. 

“Juarez has left for Comonfort’s army, to urge offensive opera¬ 
tions.” 

“ On the morning of the 25th both parties were reinforced, and 
continued the fight with the greatest determination and ferocity, the 
Mexicans at its close holding their original position. 

“During the contest, the French exploded another mine in the 
Santa Jesu, and another fight ensued here, lasting seven hours, the 
Mexicans remaining masters of the field, and capturing 130 prisoners 
from the first regiment of French Zouaves. 

“ The French left 400 dead upon the field. 

“ Since these fights, the French have kept up the bombardment 
of the city, though less vigorously than before. 

“ On the 1st of May, President Juarez left the city of Mexico for 
General Comonfort’s camp, near Puebla, for the purpose of urging 
immediate offensive operations against the French.” 

General Ortega’s despatch to General Comonfort, dated Puebla, 
the 29th April, thus sums up the military situation during the last 
month and a half:— 

“ The French have made eight assaults, succeeding only in two. 
We have lost nothing save our abandoned forts and one line of de¬ 
fences. For the last thirty-one days, we have not lost a foot of 
ground. The French continue to throw their bombs into the city, 
and are cutting ditches and covered ways for an attack on Santa 
Austa.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


437 


u If the Emperor of the French is indifferent to the sacrifice of 
blood and treasure, and is determined on reaching the capital, there 
can be certainly no question as to the result; but the victory will be 
a barren one—ruins only will mark the spot where once stood a 
town and a capital. Puebla is already half destroyed, and will be 
so entirely before it is evacuated, and the same fate awaits the city. 
The Government will then retire to one of the many neighbouring 
States.”— Times. 

11 That the defence has hitherto been conducted with skill and 
resolution cannot be denied; the chiefs, several of whom are foreigners, 
know how impossible it is to bring the Mexican soldier face to face 
with Europeans, and have therefore adopted this harassing system 
of warfare.” 

“ Accounts from Mexico to the 17th ult., vid New Orleans, state that 
the French army had been repulsed in an assault upon Puebla, with 
the loss of 8,000 men and 60 pieces of artillery. Later news, vid 
San Francisco, states that on the 1st inst. the French had been 
bombarding Puebla for ten days, and had driven the Mexicans from 
their outer line of defences, capturing 150 prisoners.” 

“Further news from Mexico asserts that the French had suffered 
considerably before Puebla, their loss in killed and wounded amount¬ 
ing to 3,000 men. It was reported that Comonfort, with 8,000 
cavalry, was in the rear of the French, and that supplies could only 
be sent to the latter from Vera Cruz under strong escort. 

“ The Mexicans are said to be fighting obstinately. The rainy season 
had set in, which would prevent the French reaching Mexico for 
several months.”— BelVs Messenger. 

11 The French ruler has not declared war against Mexico, and dis¬ 
claimed all intention of conquest, but alleged as a reason for inva¬ 
sion that Mexico was in favour of French intervention, and would 
gladly hail the overthrow of her rulers. Subsequent events have 
proved it a fallacy. What object , then , has France in attempting the 
subjugation of Mexico ? ” 

“ General Ortega continues his despatch by stating that if, through 
the chances of war the city is lost , the Supreme Government may rest 
assured that nothing will be left for the enemy but a heap of ruins , the 
besieged being determined to defend the forts in the faubourgs to 
the last extremity. Each house will be found a fortress when 
attacked, and when captured, a ruin.” 



438 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


This war of jobbery is unpopular even in France. 

“ Mexico goes straight to the heart of the ordinary Parisian. It 
stirs up the provincial to think that French blood is poured out in 
vain; and it agitates the money-loving public to see a deficit forced 
on the Budget, because the armies of the Emperor are instructed to 
push Juarez from the seat of honour, and to give his place to some 
one as unknown and as incalculable as the future King of Greece.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“Jules Favre added point to the discussion, and gave it the 
welcome spice of scandal, by entering on a history of the famous 
Jecker bonds, to turn which worthless hits of paper into solid gold is said 
to have been the secret purpose of the Mexican expedition in the hearts of the 
hangers-on of the Emperor .”— lb. 

“M. Favre also mentioned that in the course of 1862, and after 
his dishonesty had become known, he was naturalised as a French 
citizen. Under these circumstances, M. Favre did not think any 
astonishment should be felt at the French ultimatum having caused 
the withdrawal of England and Spain.” 

“ M. Jules Favre, in the powerful speech which carried away for 
the moment the obedient Chamber, and provoked animating cheers 
and shouts of applause, touched a string to which every heart 
answered, when he spoke of the anxiety from which few French 
families are exempt when they think of their sons who are serving, 
or are destined to serve, in Mexico.” 

“ The Mexican expedition is admitted by every one, except , perhaps , 
the holders of Jecker scrip , to be a failure. It has damaged the plans 
for financial reform, and it has, as yet, brought little glory to the 
French arms. The Emperor would not be sorry to make people 
forget the thing altogether; but whether he would go the length of 
undertaking a second war against Kussia is another question.” 

‘ 1 It was with some regret that the country saw the expedition to 
Mexico, of which it did not sufficiently comprehend the causes or the 
object. More than a year has elapsed, and it does not even now com¬ 
prehend it; nor has anything been done to remove its uncertainty. 
The expose of the situation of the Empire is on this point remarkably 
laconic. It is not enough to refer to what was said on the subject 
by the organs of the Government in the Corps Legislatif last Session. 
Many serious events have occurred since then, and the Government 
must have learned much. Even the language held in Mexico, and 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


439 


the addresses to the Mexicans, have not more clearly explained what 
will he the political conclusion after the definitive triumphs of our 
arms. The instructions given to General Forey, and published in 
the official documents, will suggest doubts as to the extent and 
duration of the task which will be entailed on us by victory, and the 
complications which such vast plans may give rise to .”—French Paper. 

u The strongest token of that life in Mexico is, perhaps, the 
unanimity with which the French intervention has been repudiated 
and withstood .”—Saturday Review. 

u Eighteen months is a long time to take in conquering a strip of 
country that is not more than forty leagues wide, and only the com¬ 
mencement of a great chain of mountains. But when each league 
of ground that is captured implies an expense of 4,000,000f. (or 
£160,000 sterling), the plan of making that country supply the mills 
of Rouen and Mulhouse seems out of the question. 

“ Mr. Buxton called attention to the purchase and deportation from 
Egypt of a negro regiment by the Emperor of the French, character¬ 
ising the transaction as a cruel one. 

“Lord Palmerston observed that the transaction was certainly a 
very irregular one on the part of the Egyptian Government, and a 
very unfortunate one. 

“ The Egyptian Government had committed an act which could be 
likened only to the violence and cruelty which had been inflicted by 
Russia on the inhabitants of Warsaw. They had employee! persons 
to perambulate the streets of the town, with orders to seize every 
Nubian whom they deemed fit for military duty, tear him from his 
family, and send him on board a French frigate to serve in Mexico. 

“ If Mr. Lempriere’s authorities and observations are trustworthy 
guides, it is difficult to see any release from the present false position 
of France which is likely to content at once the French and Mexican 
peoples; and still more difficult to fix any reasonable term within 
which to expect the solution of the Mexican question. It would 
seem that some blood is yet to be shed before the present phase of 
this question makes way for an occupation of the capital by the 
French army; and whatever may be the value of the laurels to be 
won in achieving such a result, that result itself will only change 
one complication for another.”— lb. 

“ That the French can conquer Mexico appears to me almost an 
absurdity, nor do I believe that Napoleon entertains any such idea; 


440 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


but that his army will succeed in seizing the capital and changing, 
to some extent, the Gk>vernment of the country, I do not doubt. 
Whether that may result in good or evil for Mexico is another ques¬ 
tion, upon which opinions may differ. Almonte, of course, entertains 
high hopes of being placed in the supreme magistracy of the nation 
by the French; but I do not think his hopes will be realised. The 
French will place no man in that position by force of arms, and 
Almonte will never be elected President by the Mexican people. If 
a monarchy should be established his chances are still smaller, 
though I do not believe there will be quite so radical a change from 
Republicanism. 

u General Forey, we hear, has made a demand for more reinforce¬ 
ments in men and material, which cannot be complied with. To one 
General officer summoned from Africa a command is said to have 
been offered, and respectfully declined. It is thought strange that 
General Forey has not done more than he has with the resources at 
his command; and yet of his capacity as an officer there is no ques¬ 
tion. The conclusion people come to is that the Mexicans must be 
better able to resist invasion than the Emperor supposed.” 

“ When the Government is once installed, General Forey will 
present his bill of costs for the services rendered to the country. 
The bill will consist of indemnity to France for the expenses of the 
war, and for the maintenance of the corps of occupation to which I 
have just referred. In order to secure this indemnity, and to take it 
out of the power of the Americans to furnish it, the French Govern¬ 
ment will take into their own hands certain rich mines, which will 
be worked by French engineers already on the spot. The yield of 
these mines will, it is calculated, be with modern appliances, three 
times as much as under the Mexicans with their rude machinery; 
the revenues accruing from them will be applied to paying the 
indemnity, the cost of maintaining an army of occupation for a time not 
yet specified, but which will not be less than three or four years, and 
the rest will be at the disposal of the new Government. The French, 
however, will not entirely quit the country until the Mexicans are 
able to form a just estimate of the civilising process to which they 
and their mines have been subjected. The new Government will be 
fenced round with all the protection its founders can give it; and 
imposing military posts will protect the works from coups de main. 
When the Mexican mind is fully prepared to carry out the improve- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


441 


ments, moral and material, introduced under their auspices, the 
French will return home.” 

“ General Forey has issued a proclamation, wherein he announces 
to the army that the attack upon Puebla will take place at an early 
period. The General renews the promise that the Mexicans shall 
be at liberty to choose the form of their Government, and adds that 
1 the French army will remain long enough in Mexico to aid the Govern¬ 
ment in 'proceeding on the path of progress? ’ ” 

“Great expense has been incurred beyond both the old and the 
new limits of the Budget, without its being considered necessary to 
convoke the Legislative Body. The transfer of credits ( viremens) 
has failed to cover the unforeseen expenses of the Mexican expedi¬ 
tion, and the Minister estimates that, in addition to the 59 millions 
voted by the Chamber, 24 millions will have to be placed to the 
account of 1862. The sums thus spent must be provided out of 
extraordinary credits, though the Senatus-consulte of the 21st of 
December prescribed, that for every credit of the kind, the previous 
sanction of the Legislative Body is indispensable.” 

“It is undeniable that the results of the campaign have sadly 
disappointed the Emperor, and caused much discontent, which is not 
confined to civilians. The worst of it is that there is no certainty of 
doing much better within a reasonable time. The evacuation of 
Tampico as of Jalapa, and particularly the former, was a measure 
imposed by necessity. Every one, not excepting the Emperor, is 
heartily sick of the whole affair.” 

“ The news from Mexico is not encouraging. General Forey 
has not moved, and it is said that in his opinion the object of 
the expedition will not be completed for some time to come. 
Puebla is so fortified as to require a siege in due form before it be 
taken.” 

“The news from Cochin China received here is by no means 
satisfactory, and reinforcements are earnestly asked for by the officer 
in command of the French force. General Forey is making the same 
demand from Mexico, where, it is said, 6,000 men are required in 
addition to the present large force in that country.” 

“ From Saigon intelligence has been received of the country being 
again in insurrection, the French with their present force there being 
unable to cope with it. Their whole force is stated not to exceed 
3,000 men. Some reinforcement is expected via Suez, but our allies 


442 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


have more difficulties to contend with in that country than they are 
willing to allow.” 

“Turning the Tables. —Mr. Seward will, we hope, see at once 
the feasibility, not to say the humanity, of our suggestion. France 
is burning with impatience to mediate with us. We surely cannot 
be outdone by France in generosity. She feels the deepest commis- 
seration for our misfortunes, and would, at all risks and hazards, stop 
the effusion of blood in our country. Surely we are bound to feel 
the same commiseration for her in Mexico. We must mediate, and 
the sooner the better. Our Administration cannot plead other and 
more momentous occupations. Is not Napoleon overwhelmed with 
care and anxiety ? Has he not enough and more than enough upon 
his hands ? And yet we see that he devotes his attention to us with 
generous pertinacity. We must mediate, and the sooner Mr. Seward 
makes the proposal the sooner shall we stand in a proper light before 
the world. The difficulties of France in Mexico are harrowing, and, 
what is more, they are increasing. The Mexicans remain blind to 
all the advantages of Napoleon’s rule, and they are shedding the 
blood of their would-be benefactors. They lasso them, assassinate 
them, poison them. Keally we must mediate, and, as a proof of 
untiring and devoted friendship to France, we must endeavour to 
induce other Governments to join us in our offer. England would 
doubtless gladly act with us; Spain also ; while, to render the offer 
the more gracious, our Government should request our newspapers to 
intimate that, in case Napoleon refuses our services, the mediators 
will break the blockade of all the Mexican ports, and lend the 
Mexicans armed aid against the French. All this, of course, as a 
proof of goodwill to France, and of our intense desire to benefit her 
interests and those of the world at large .”—New York Herald. 

“ Letters from officers in General Forey’s force are written in a 
very desponding tone. They speak especially of a dearth of provi¬ 
sions.” 

“A number of non-commissioned officers and privates have arrived 
in Paris from Mexico, having been sent back to France either defini¬ 
tively discharged, or for the recovery of their health.” 

The tardy and dearly purchased victory has excited disappoint¬ 
ment rather than delight in France; and is regarded in America 
with jealousy and dislike. The expedition was undertaken and 
carried on to divert public attention in France from its own 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


443 


internal degradation. It was very unpopular with, the troops 
despatched to a scene of disease, danger, and difficulty; and tended 
to perpetuate in France the horrors of the conscription. 

“ That a French force of 23,000 men should have been detained 
upwards of five weeks before Puebla has certainly surprised every 
one, and none more so than your correspondent. Criticism is freely 
indulged in. 

“ The authorities do what they can to represent the state of affairs 
in Mexico as prosperous, and the ‘ unwritten press ’ show them in a 
gloomy fight. This nation takes, in general, great delight in mili¬ 
tary triumphs; but the ‘ victory of Puebla ’ rather disappoints it. 
More hands are rubbed whenever it is reported that General Forey is 
hemmed in between two fires than whenever it is announced that he is 
victorious, which has the effect of giving rise to a feeling of disap¬ 
pointment. ”— Liberal Paper. 

“In his letter to General Forey, published in the Moniteur , 
the Emperor says that the news of the capture of Puebla ‘has 
filled him with joy.’ There is no doubt whatever of the fact; 
but the joy would have been more intense had the news come before 
the elections. The Emperor well knows that no wa/r was more 
unpopular , and that the public discontent at the length of time it has 
lasted , and the sacrifices it has occasioned , teas every day becoming more 
serious; and though Mexico holds out yet, it must certainly be a 
great relief to him that the formidable outpost of Puebla has at last 
been taken. General Forey’s despatch states that the prisoners of 
war are 13,200, including 26 generals, and over 200 superior officers. 
These did not surrender until they had broken their arms , spiked their 
guns , and blown up their magazines. 

“ I have said that the fall of Puebla has not occurred a moment 
too soon. It is now a year and a half since the campaign opened. The 
Emperor was led to believe that serious resistance on the part of the 
Mexicans was out of the question ; that his army would be exposed 
to no other casualties than those incident to a military promenade 
from the landing-place to the capital, and that they would meet 
along the fine of march with an enthusiastic reception. A Paris 
evening paper actually described their triumphal entry into Puebla, 
bending under the weight of the garlands flung upon them from its 
balconies; and M. Billault announced in the Legislative Chamber , 
fifteen months ago , that at the moment he was speaking the French flag was 


444 OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONATARTES ? 

assuredly floating over the toivers and steeples of the city of Mexico .”— 
Times. 

“The French Legislative body, by a majority of 225 votes to 
six, passed a bill for calling out 100,000 men from the class 
of 1863. It is about one-fiftieth part of the picked youth of 
France. It is not the wild, the bold, the adventurous, or the 
desperate who are thus taken. The most skilful workman and the 
most peace-loving of youths—the bread-winner of the family and the 
pet of the village, is, if he be strong, and healthy, and well-formed, 
just as likely to be turned into a soldier and sent off to Algeria to 
perish of dysentery, or to Mexico to die of vomito, as the harum- 
scarum fellow who has exhausted his friends and disgraced his family, 
and made the neighbourhood too hot to hold him. The meshes are 
very close; all are fish that comes to the net; and the very best are 
picked out for consumption. People, however, get used even to 
this ; although a very little aggravation in the method of a Con¬ 
scription seems to put it beyond the endurance even of a conquered 
people like the Poles. The French submit to it as we submit to 
the income tax—as a fatality from which there is no escape.” 

—n. 

“When a Frenchman is told that the fundamental basis of the 
organization of the French army is the consumption of 100,000 men 
per annum, and that the unknown necessities of the unknown policy 
of the Emperor require that this should be adopted as a rule of 
indefinite duration, he is told in effect that this is a matter with 
which he has nothing to do. Moloch will have his 100,000 men a 
year, and France must provide them.”— lb. 

“ To us it is happily of no manner of interest, except to show us 
how terrible this scourge is, how sharply and sorely it is felt, and 
how eagerly the lightest alleviation of it is desired and discussed by 
Frenchmen. ’ ’— lb. 

“ 1 One hundred thousand men,’ says a Paris paper, speaking of 
this year’s conscription—‘ one hundred thousand men have just 
passed under the regulation measure, and have heard the President 
of the Board of Bevision cry out, as each moved on, 1 Good for 
service.’ One hundred thousand families have received the terrible 
tidings. For the first few days all is sorrow ; soon courage returns to their 
valiant hearts. Is not France a nest ot soldiers?” 

“No doubt, the army of France is worthy of admiration; but, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


445 


while we are struck at the exactness with which she turns out yearly 
her 100,000 youths, apparently excellent in health and exuberant in 
spirits—some of them already grasping in fancy the Marshal’s staff 
which they are to find in their cartridge-boxes—we do not notice 
the crowds which the same Board of Revision have been forced to 
reject as unfit material for powder to consume before they can get at 
the number required. It is affirmed, by those who ought to know 
the fact, that the sickly, the deformed, or those who are below even 
the small stature of an approved conscript, are far more numerous 
than those who are declared fit for service. The result of the con¬ 
scription which is just concluded shows that in this respect matters 
are still worse. The War Department had been forced to lower, by 
a few centimetres, the standard required for the old regiments ; and 
it is feared that, if the numerical amount of the conscription be 
maintained at its present rate, a further reduction will become 
indispensable. 

“This ogre, called the Conscription, swallows up year after 

YEAR THE FLOWER OF THE YOUTHFUL RURAL POPULATION. Those wllO 

are left behind are comparatively short in stature, feeble in frame, 
and infirm. It is stated on authority, which has not, I believe, been 
contested, that, out of 1,000 youths registered as the contingent to 
be furnished by certain cantons, 731 were rejected by the Revision 
Board as unable from physical defects to bear arms. Napoleon /. 
used to boast that he had 100,000 men to spend every year, and his 
incessant wars and incessant calls upon the population to support 
them have produced what we now witness. To this , as well as to the 
laws on the division of property , is attributed the fact that the popula¬ 
tion for the last ten years has stood still , where it has not actually 
diminished, while that of other European countries has increased.” 
Morning Advertiser. 

“ The news from Mexico, after the exaggerated statements so 
long current of successful resistance at Puebla, had created both 
surprise and disappointment.”— American Times. 

“ It was obvious that, because of the instinct which makes crea¬ 
tures cling to life, a monarch thus kept always standing on the very 
edge of a horrible fate, but still having for the time in his hands the 
engine of the state, would be driven by the very law of his being to make 
use of the forces of the nation as a means of safety for himself and his 
comrades; and that to that one end not only the operations of the 


446 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


home government, but even the foreign policy of the country would 
be steadily aimed.”— Kinglake , I. 316. 

“ He was sensible it was likely to be no easy affair nor soon to be 
despatched, and this was one reason for engaging in it; for he was 
desirous to keep the citizens employed abroad, that they might not 
have leisure to sit down at home, and raise tumults and seditions.” 
— Plutarch. 

“It appears that, notwithstanding the success at Puebla, fresh, 
detachments are to be despatched to the dangerous and deadly land 
where so many Frenchmen have already died the victims of Bona- 
partist astuteness and ambition. 

Take mercy 

On the poor souls, for whom this hungry war 
Opens his vasty jaws—upon your head 
Turning the widow’s tears, the orphan’s cries, 

The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens groans, 

For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers, 

That shall he swallow’d in this controversy. 

Shakspeare. 

“ The troops exhausted with fatigue, and tired out with the multi¬ 
tude of enemies they had to engage with, broke out into complaints 
as they were on their march to the port. ‘ Whither will this man 
lead us,’ said they? or, ‘Where will be the end of our labours? 
Will he harass us for ever, as if we had limbs of stones or bodies of 
iron ? . . . Will he not learn from our wounds that we are mortal ? 
that we have the same feelings, and are liable to the same impres¬ 
sions with other men.’ ”— Pint. Jul. Caesar. 

La France states that orders have been forwarded to the ports of 
France to keep the men-of-war intended for Mexico in a state of 
armed preparation, and adds— 

“‘The question whether reinforcements are to be despatched 
thither will be decided at the commencement of July, as soon as the 
further reports shall have been received from General Forey. In 
the meantime the organization of the civil government of Mexico 
will be proceeded with.’ 

“The Jean-Bart , Tilsit , Wagram, and Turenne are under sailing 
orders, with reinforcements and munitions of war, for Mexico.”— 
Times. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


447 


* ‘ Accounts from Cherbourg state that considerable reinforcements 

are being despatched to the French army in Mexico.”— Times. 

• 

In Mexico, patriotism has at last succumbed, after a gallant and 
glorious resistance, and the wicked, wanton aggression of unhallowed 
despotism has achieved a tardy and tarnished triumph. 

“ One extract published by the Ha/vannah Diary , reports the 
arrival at Havannah of the French war steamer Doria , from Vera 
Cruz, with despatches from General Forey, announcing the occu¬ 
pation of Puebla by the French on the 17th ult., and the uncon¬ 
ditional surrender of General Ortega with all his forces.” 

The following is what appears in the Moniteur :— 

u The Minister of Foreign Affairs has received the following 
despatch from M. de Montholon, Consul-General of France at New 
York:— 

“ ‘ News from Havannah and Yera Cruz.—Puebla is in our hands. 
Ortega has surrendered without conditions, with 18,000 men. 

“ 1 MONTHOLON.’ ” 

“ General Forey is said to have cap toed the Mexican commander- 
in-chief, 23 generals, 900 officers, and 7,000 privates.” 

“ The nations know that our honour once satisfied and reparation 
obtained, our triumph changes into benefaction. We are not 
enemies but liberators of the Mexican people, who were deceived by 
an iniquitous Government. They will learn that under Napoleon 
III. the French soldier is more than ever the soldier of civilisation 
and humanity .”—Man of December. 

“ I deeply deplore the probable loss of so many brave men, but I 
have the consoling idea that their death has not been useless either 
to the interests or to the honour of France, or to civilisation.”— lb. 

“ This Forey, the traitor, who, has been deputed by the author of 
the coup d'etat to restore peace and liberty to Mexico, had earned his 
position by the part which he took in the establishment of despotism 
in France by a most portentous and perfidious crime. He com¬ 
manded the battalions, which, at that base and brutal crisis, sur¬ 
rounded the Mayoralty, in which many of the national deputies 
(including the illustrious Berryer) were assembled. It was Forey 
(the intended liberator of Mexico, under a freely adoptod constitu¬ 
tion) “who ordered the chasseurs to load, to clear the halls, to do 


448 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


this if necessary by force y and to carry off to tlie prison of Mazas 
any deputies offering resistance. It was under liis auspices 
that the president, and one of the vice-presidents were collared by 
officers of the police and led out, when the whole assembly was 
marched through the streets, enfolded between files of soldiery. 
Forey rode by the side of the columns.”— Kinglake , E. 246. 

‘ ‘ The Mexicans fought bravely; but the next day, the parallel 
having been extended up to the foot of the fortress, the Mexican 
general, Mendoza, presented himself at the camp, asking General 
Forey to let the garrison leave with its arms, baggage, and a portion 
of the artillery, and that they would, on those conditions, surrender 
the city. 

“General Forey refused to comply with these propositions, and 
replied, that, if in a few hours the city was not given up, he would 
resume the bombardment. 

“At five o’clock in the afternoon, an officer brought a letter from 
General Ortega to General Forey, announcing that he was ready to 
surrender unconditionally with his troops. Colonel Manique, the 
officer in command of General Forey’s staff, was then detached with 
the 1st battalion of Foot Chasseurs, Commander Corey, and a 
platoon of Hussars, for the purpose of occupying the place. The 
entrance of the troops took place in an orderly manner, and without 
any casualty on either side.” 

“These proposals were not accepted by General Ortega, who, in 
the night between the 16th and 17th, disbanded his army, destroyed 
the weapons, spiked his guns, blew up the powder magazines, and 
sent me an envoy to say that the garrison had completed its defence 
and surrendered at discretion.” 

“It was scarcely daylight, when 12,000 men, most of them with¬ 
out arms or uniforms, which they had cast away in the streets, sur¬ 
rendered as prisoners, and the officers, numbering from 1,000 to 
1,200, of whom 26 were generals and 200 superior officers, informed 
me that they awaited my orders at the Palace of the Government.” 

“ Our object, as you are aware, is not to impose upon the Mexi¬ 
cans a Government contrary to their wish, or to make our success a 
triumph for any party whatsoever. I wish Mexico to be regenerated 
to a new life, and that soon, reformed by a Government based upon 
the national will, on principles of order and progress, it may admit 
that it owes to France its peace and its prosperity.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


449 


u The regenerated Mexico is to be a sort of gratoful and obliged 
poor relation of the great French Empire.”— Scotsman. 

How can Mexico expect peace or prosperity from an ungrateful 
and unscrupulous ticket of leave man, who has gagged and garotted 
his betrayed and downtrodden country ? 

i 1 Having no regard for justice or honour, he soon entered into 
measures to subject the city to himself; and having put to death a 
number of the principal inhabitants without form of trial, declared 
himself absolute prince of it.”— Plutarch , “ TimoleonP 

“ What he needed for his life’s sake was to become so conspicuous, 
whether as a disturber or as a pacificator of other nations, that 
Frenchmen might be brought to look at wnAT he was doing to 
others, instead of what he had done to them.”— Kinglakc , I. 345. 

“ They won France. They used her hard—they took her freedom 
—they laid open her purse, and were rich with her wealth. They 
went and sat in the seat of kings and statesmen, and handled the 
mighty nation as they willed, in the face of Europe. Those who 
hated freedom, and those who bore ill will towards the French 
people, made merry with what they saw. These are the things which 
Charles Louis Napoleon did. What he had sworn to do was set forth 
in the oath which he took on the 20th of December, 1848. On that 
day he stood before the National Assembly, and lifting his right 
arm towards heaven, swore . . . What he had pledged his honour 
to do was set forth in the promise, which of his own free-will he 
addressed to the Assembly. Heading from a paper which he had 
prepared, he uttered these words—“ The votes of the nation, and 
the oath which I have just taken, command my future conduct. 
My duty is clear, I will fulfil it as a man of honour. I shall regard 
as enemies of the country all those who endeavour to change by 
illegal means that which all France has established.”— Kinglakc, I. 
312. 

“ Unless a man be under some special motive for learning the 
detailed truth, it would be well for him to close his eyes against 
those horrible pages ;* for if once he looks and reads, the recol- 

* The fiendish and ferocious treatment of 2,000 men consigned to the case¬ 
mates of the fortresses, and huddled down between the decks of the Canada and 
the Dugitesclin. 


\ 


F F 


450 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE .BONAPARTES ? 


LECTION OF THE THINGS HE READS MAY HAUNT HIM AND "WEIGH UPON 
niS SPIRITS, TILL HE LONGS AND LONGS IN VAIN TO RECOVER HIS IGNO¬ 
RANCE OF WHAT, EVEN IN THIS HIS OWN TIME, HAS BEEN DONE TO LIVING 

men.” — Kinglahe , I. 294. 

“ The personal interests of the new Emperor and his December 
friends did not at all coincide with the interests of France ; for what 
he and his associates wanted, and what in truth they really needed, 
was to thrust France into a conflict which might be either diplo¬ 
matic or warlike, but which was at all events to be of a conspicuous 
sort, tending to ward off the peril of home politics, and give to the 
fabric of the 2nd December something like station and celebrity in 
Europe.”— Kinglahe , I. 322. 


13th Nov., 1850. 

“The Prince laid hold of 
almost every occasion he could 
find for vowing again and again 
that he harboured no schemes 
against the Constitution. The 
speech which he addressed to 
the Assembly in 1850, may be 
taken as one instance out of 
numbers cf these solemn and 
volunteered declarations. “ He 
considered,” he said, “as great 
criminals those who by per¬ 
sonal ambition compromised 
the small amount of stability 
secured by the Constitution— 
that if the Constitution con¬ 
tained defects and dangers the 
Assembly was competent to ex¬ 
pose them to the eyes of the 
country; but that he alone 
bound by his oath , restrained him¬ 
self within the strict limits traced 
by that act.” He declared that 
11 the first duty of authorities 
was to inspire the people with 


2nd Dec., 1851. 

“By his proclamations the 
President asserted that the 
Assembly was a hotbed of plots, 
declared it dissolved, pronounced 
for universal suffrage, proposed a 
new Constitution—vowed anew that 
his duty was to maintain the Re¬ 
public , and placed Paris and the 
twelve surrounding departments 
under martial law.”— Kinglahe , 
240. 

“ The most famous generals of 
France were seized....78 men 
were seized in the dark, of whom 
18 were members of Assembly. 
....220 deputies present, who 
declared that they resisted, and 
would yield to nothing short of 
force. President and vice presi¬ 
dents collared by officers of 
police, and led out. The whole 
assembly followed, and enfolded 
between files of soldiery was 
marched through the streets. 
General F orey rode by the side 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


451 


respect for the law by never 
deviating from it themselves, and 
that his anxiety wus not, he 
assured the assembly, to know 
who would govern France in 
1852, but to employ the time at 
his disposal, so that the transi¬ 
tion, whatever it might be, 
should be effected without agita¬ 
tion or disturbance,” &c.”— 
Kinglalce , 226. 

Tho enlightened “ saviours of 
society”—the vigilant guardians 
of public morals—the revered 
models of private virtue—the 
prosperous defenders of the 
sacredness of property—were 
Louis Charles Bonaparte, Moray, 
and Maupas, or De Maupas, and 
St. Arnaud,* formerly Le Boy. 


* “ Ho kept his counsel close until 
the appointed night, and then (what¬ 
ever faltering there may have been 
between midnight and three in the 
morning) he was out in time for the 
deed; and before the daylight came, 
HE HAD STABBED FRANCE THROUGH IN 
her sleep. Amongst men who make 
a great capture, there will often spring 
up questions concerning the division 
of the spoil. When he helped to make 
prize of France , St. Arnaud , of course , 
got much ; but his wants were vast, 
and he had earned a clear right to 
extort from his chief accomplice, 
and to go back again, and again, and 
yet again, with the terrible demand for 
‘ more ! ’ ”— Kinglake II. 9. 

“ State policy is a shameless leveller 
—is a leveller of even that difficult 
steep, which seems to divide the men 
of high honour from those of mean 
repute. The plotters of the Se¬ 
cond of December had overturned 
the social structure of France. 
They had stifled men’s minds, and 

F F 


of his column.... Members of 
Assembly kept prisoners all day 
in barracks; windowless vans, 
used for the transport of felons, 
brought into tho court of tho 
barracks, and 232 members of 
Assembly thrust into them, and 
carried off, some to the Fort 
of Mount Yalerian, some to the 
fortress of Yincennes, and some 
to the prison of Mayas. 

‘ ‘ Tho dreaming and desperate 
conspirators against order and 
liberty, whose machinations 
these “ saviours of society ” dis¬ 
covered and defeated, were 
generals Changarnier, Bedeau, 
Lamoriciere, Cavaignac, Lefto; 
and besides Thiers, and Col. 
Charras, and Boger du Nord, 
and Miot, and Bazas (who had 
been seized the night before, and 
were still held fast in the gaols) 
232 representatives of the j>eo- 
ple, including amongst others of 
wide renown Berryer, Odillon 
Barrot, Barthelemy, St. Hilaire, 
Gustave de Beaumont, Benoit 
d’Azy, the Due de Broglie, 
Admiral Cecile, Chambolle, de 
Corcelles, Dufaure, Duvergier de 
Hauranne, de Falloux, General 
Lauriston, Oscar Lafayette, 
Lanjuinais, Lasteyrie, the Due 
de Luynes, the Due de Monte¬ 
bello, General Badoult, Lafosse, 
General Oudinot, de Bemusat 
and the wise and gifted de 
Toquoville. Amongst the men 
2 



452 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


HAD MADE THEIR ELOQUENCE MUTE. 

They had forced those who were 

OF HIGH ESTATE BY CHARACTER, OR 
BY INTELLECT, OR BY BIRTH, OR BY 
HONOURABLE WEALTH, TO ENDURE TO 

see France handled at will by 

PERSONS OF NO ACCOUNT, AND TO SUB¬ 
MIT TO BE GOVERNED BY THEM, AND 
TO PAY TAXES INTO THEIR HANDS, AND 
TO MAINTAIN THEM IN LUXURY, AND 
IN ALL SO MUCH OF POMP AS CAN BE 
COPIED FROM THE SPLENDOUR OF KINGS. 

—RinglaJte II. 9. 


imprisoned tliere were twelve 
statesmen who had been cabinet 
ministers, and nine of these had 
been chosen by the President 
himself. ’ ’— Kinglalce. 

These, in the estimation of the 
Man of December were— 

Cancres, beres, et pauvres miserable 
diables. 

La Fontaine. 


“When once he resolved to become a pretender to the Imperial 
throne,* he, of course, had to try and see how it was possible, in the 
midst of this century, that the coarse Bonaparte yoke of 1804 
could be made to sit kindly upon the neck of France.”— King- 
lalce , 210. 

“ His perception of the difference between right and wrong had 
been dimmed (as it naturally would be) by the habit of seeking an 
IDEA OF MANLY WORTH IN A PERSONAGE LIKE THE FlRST BONAPARTE.” 
— Kinglalce, 215. 

“ They soon found that former reigns were comparatively a golden 
age, and reckoned those far more happy who died in servitude, than 
such as lived to see so dismal a kind of freedom.”— Plutarch, 
“ TimoleonP 

u The deceitful hand of art reached out to them the same bait of 
good hopes and fair promises, to draw them into subjection to a new 
master. ”— lb. 

“ The army was nearly 48,000 strong.The troops had been 

wrought into a feeling of hatred against the people of Paris, and had 
clearly been made to understand that they were to allow no 

CONSIDERATION FOR BY-STANDERS TO INTERFERE WITH THEIR FIRE- 

THAT THEY WERE TO GIVE NO QUARTER. A Column of SOUie 

16,000 men fired into the crowd which lined the foot-pavement, and 
upon the men, women, and children who stood at the balconies and 
windows. The slaughter of unarmed men and women was continued 


* Tu n’es qu’un conjure, pare d’un nom sublime, 

Que l’impunite seule enhardissait au crime. 

Voltaire. 





OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TOE BONAPARTES ? 


453 


for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes . . . before one shop-front 

they counted thirty-three corpses .The soldiers broke into many 

houses, and hunted the inmates from floor to floor, and caught them 
at last, and slaughtered them. Fourteen helpless people shrank 

for safety behind some piles of carpet. The soldiers hilled them 

crouching. ... Of the men who defended the barricade of the Porte 
St. Martin, the troops spared not one .... many were defenceless 

prisoners in the hands of the soldiery, who shot them.This 

shooting was brought about by causing the troops to understand, that 
they were to give no quarter. ... A hundred men were caught behind a 
barricade, and all of these were shot; but their blood was not reckoned to 
be enough, for by going into the houses where there were supposed 
to be fugitives, the soldiers got hold of thirty more, and these also 

they hilled .under orders so stringent, and yet in some 

instances with so much deliberation, that many of the poor fellows 
put to death were allowed to dispose of their little treasures before 

they died.A former member of the Legislative Assembly 

declares that he saw with his own eyes each of the prisoners 
destined to undergo their fate driven, with his hands tied behind 
him, into one of the Courts of the Prefecture, and then one of 
Maupas’s police officers came and hnoched him on the head with a loaded 
club , and felled him —felled him in the way that is used by a man 
when he has to slaughter a bullock.^ .... This slaughtering of 
prisoners was the slaughtering of men against whom it was only to 
be charged, that they were in arms , not to violate but to defend the laws 

of their country .Pightly or wrongly, Paris still believes, that, 

during the night of the 1st, and again during the night of the 5th, 
prisoners were shot in batches, and thrown into the pits.f .... The 

burying of the bodies was done for the most part at night.A 

colonel declared that his regiment alone had killed 2,400 men. 

The shock of being within sight, and hearing the shrieks, broke 
down the nervous strength of many a brave, though tender man, and 

caused him to burst into sobs, as though he were a little child. 

Because of the palsy that came upon her after the slaughter of the 

* “ The Mexicans will learn, that, under Napoleon III., the French soldier is 
morethan ever the soldier of civilisation and humanity.”— Man of December. 

f <<I deeply deplore the probable loss of so many brave men; but I have the 
consoling idea, that their death has not been useless either to the interests or to the 
mere honour of France, or to civilisation.”— lb. 









454 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


Boulevard, this Paris—the beauteous, heroic Paris, this queen of 
great renown-—was delivered bound into the hands of Prince Louis 
Bonaparte, and Morny, and Maupas, and St. Arnaud (formerly 
le Poi); and the benefit which Prince Louis derived was not 

transitory.Before the night closed in on the 4th of December, 

he was sheltered safe from ridicule by the ghastly heaps on the 

Boulevard.Every department which seemed likely to move 

was put under martial law. Then followed slaughter, banishment, 
imprisonment, sequestration; and all this at the mere pleasure of 

generals raging with a cruel hatred of the people.The army 

in the provinces closely imitated the ferocity of the army at Paris. 
.... Morny sent into the provinces men of dire repute, and armed 
with terrible powers. These persons were called commissaries. . . . 
The brethren of the Elysde resolved to follow up their victory over France. 
If French citizens, at some period of their lives, had belonged to 
societies forbidden by statute, they were, in virtue of a retro-operative 
decree, made liable to be instantly seized, and transported either to 
the penal settlements in Africa, or to the torrid swamps of Cayenne. 
. . . . These citizens amounted to no less than two millions! ... To 
be banished to Cayenne was to be put to a slow, cruel, horrible 

death.The panegyrist of Louis Bonaparte and his fellow- 

plotters acknowledges, that the number of people who were seized 
and transported, within the few weeks which followed the 2nd of 

December, amoimted to the enormous number of 26,000.It 

could not be but that what remained of France when she had been 
thus stricken should for years seem to languish, and to be of a poor 
spirit. This is why I have chosen to say, that Paris was dismanned. 

. . . . Besides the men killed and the men transported, there were 
some thousands of Frenchmen, who were made to undergo sufferings 
too horrible to be here told. I speak of those who were enclosed in 
the casemates of the fortresses, and huddled down between the 
decks of the Canada and the Fuguesclin. These hapless beings, 
were, for the most part, men attached to the cause of the Republic. 
It would seem that of the two thousand men whose sufferings were 
the most known, a great part were men whose lives had been engaged 
in literary pursuits ; for amongst them were authors of some repute ; 
editors of newspapers, and political writers of many grades; besides 
lawyers, physicians, and others, whose labours in the field of politics 
had been mainly labours of tlio intellectual sort. The torments of 







OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


455 


these men lasted from two to three months.Because of what 

they had suffered, they were hideous and terrible to look upon.”— 
K inglake. 

Not one of the conspirators had the courage, or, perhaps, the 
inclination, to remonstrate even against the renewed massacre on 
the 4th, or to say— 

Ah ! n’ensanglantez point le prix de la victoire— 

* * * * * 

Je vais snr les vaincus e’tendant mon secours, 

Consoler leur misere, et veiller sur leurs jours. 

Voltaire. 

It is with great reluctance that I refrain from selecting any 
further extracts from the fourteenth chapter of that admirable and 
unrivalled work, which has insured for its distinguished author 
the highest rank in the catalogue of the historians whom the latest 
posterity cannot fail to appreciate, to applaud, and to admire. It 
were much to be wished that the entire work, but especially the 
chapter in which the horrors of the December massacres are so faith¬ 
fully, fearlessly pourtrayed, were translated into every language, 
and perused in every dwelling. It is impossible to exaggerate the 
value and importance of the service which Mr. Kinglake has rendered 
to the cause of freedom, humanity, and justice. 

"When arm’d for virtue, he dar’d point the pen, 

Brand the hold front of shameless, guilty men, 

Dash the proud gamester in his gilded ear, 

Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star. 

Pope. 

“ At home, the adversaries of the Imperial Government are reduced 
to impotence and silence. The Emperor Napoleon is free to act and to 
speak as he pleases , and nowhere throughout the continent of Europe 
is there any one to gainsay him. Europe cannot show a Prince, or 
a captain, or a statesman capable or desirous of measuring himself 
with him.”— Montalembert. 

To no country does this frank but fearful admission more con¬ 
spicuously apply than to our own. The British Cabinet has 
essentially contributed, by its rashness and recklessness, to reduce 
Europe, especially England, to a condition, which their own most 
powerful organ has thus aptly and honestly described:— 



456 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


“The future of England may be, indeed, uncertain. Never was 

THE HORIZON OF EUROPE MORE LOWERING. CLOUDS AND DARKNESS 
ARE ABOVE AND ON ALL SIDES.”- Times. 

I repeat wliat has been already stated on this subject, in reference 
to the policy and procedure of its two principal members. Our 
Prime Minister openly and ostentatiously hastened to confirm and 
consolidate the power of the subtle and sanguinary Decemberists; 
and it might have long since been expected, that he would have 
made a deliberate and dignified retreat from the cares, and even the 
emoluments of public life. 

Peccet ad extremum ne ridendus. 

Horace. 

Consume de travaux, appesanti pas 1’ age, 

Je suis las du pouvoir, 

Voltaire. 

Whilst “ double, double, toil and trouble ” has been the principle 
by which our foreign policy has been mainly guided in every 
quarter. 

“Lord John Pussell displaced Sir Robert Peel by an adverse vote 
on his Irish Arms’ Act, and then introduced and carried, as the first 
measure of his own Administration, an act of precisely the same 
character. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“His life has been spent in distributing other people’s tran¬ 
quillity . . . nor is the task of upsetting ministries and managing 
successful intrigues quite consistent with a love of personal ease 
.... The statesman who curtly and insolently dismissed Lord 
Palmerston from ofiice, may very honestly—though, at the same 
time, very oddly, and perhaps not altogether without a pang, parade 
himself as this very Lord Palmerston’s eulogist and subordinate.” 
—II. 

“As far as we can understand or characterise Lord Russell’s 
diplomacy, it consists of a uniform course of barking, and snapping, 
and snarling—of yelping, perhaps, in the presence of big dogs, but 
of growling ferociously over all the little ones. Witness Denmark 

and Brazil as specimens on one side, and Prince Grortschakoff and 
Mr. Seward on the other.”— lb. 

“The desire to rest and be thankful may be very natural to a 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


457 


veteran statesman wlio has passed so many measures, and provided 
for so ample a following of cousinry and Whiggery.”— Saturday 
Review. 

“Only last year, last month, last week, he was the Lord John 
Bussell of old—active, petulant, scornful, careless of other people’s 
feelings, quick in quarrel, not nice in speech.”— lb. 

“ However convenient for the Ministry the proposed plan as to 
the blockade may be, in order temporarily to stave off importunities 
or threats, there could scarcely be one for which we might, through¬ 
out the future, have to pay more dearly.”— lb. 

“But it is a Utopianism unworthy of the Foreign Minister of a 
European State to make proposals (as to Poland) which could not 
be accepted without the prospect of reviving a state of things which 
has long become obsolete, and introducing disturbances which could 
find no satisfactory end except by a European war.”— Liberal Paper. 

Much umbrage has also been justly taken by the Federalists, as 
to-the tone adopted towards them by the British Foreign Office. 

“Hard, curt, cautious, cynical, it evinces an indifference to those 
kindly relations which nations ought to cultivate with each other, 
and which should be the study of a wise statesmanship.”— Senator 
Sumner. 

“The Opinione says, ‘After all it may stand comparison with the 
Ministries of other lands. At any rate no Italian Minuter of Foreign 
affairs would have ventured on such a step as has been taken by an English 
one in the removal of Sir James.' 1 One cannot refrain from very 
seriously asking the question, Whether it would not be more honour¬ 
able and more politic for our Foreign Office to retrace a false step, 
and restore to our Embassy at Turin the man whom both the English 
and Italian people feel to be the best fitted for the post ? A sacrifice of 
amour-propre on all sides should be made for the true interests of the 
country.”— Conservative Paper. 

“We have not yet heard, nor are we likely soon to hear, the end 
of this terrible Hudson-Elliott business. I see almost every paper in 
Europe has taken it up—each from its own special point of view. The 
Allgemeine Zeitung , with its Austrian tendencies, cries out, ‘ Thank 
God we have got rid of that man at last; from him proceeded all 
the terrible perversion of English opinion and policy from which we 
have suffered during the last four years.’ ”— Conservative Paper. 


458 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“The state of Poland is awful; cliiefly owing to the intrigues in 
Paris and London. If left to themselves, free from incendiaries, matters 
would be arranged with Bussia.”— Letter from an intelligent traveller 
in Germany. 

Warsaw is in a fearful condition; terror is at its height— 
atrocities on both sides appalling. Our Government has a deep 
responsibility for all these horrors. Bussell is a babbling idiot 
in foreign policy. He is the laughing-stock of Germany at all 
events. 

In speaking of the Bonapartist contingent employed in the 
Crimean war, it has been justly said (and is equally true everywhere), 
‘ ‘ the Power which fought that day by the side of England was not, 
after all, mighty Prance—brave, warlike, virtuous Prance; it was 
only that intermittent thing which to-day is, and to-morrow 
is not. It was what people call ‘ the French Empire.’ ”— King- 
lahe, II., 519. 

“ Prom time to time the common soldiery were gratified with 
presents of food and wine, as well as with abundance of flattering 
words.”— lb., 237. 

“Hoc autemrex ettyrannus interest; rex a senatu et populo volente 
ac libente, quod satis prsesiclii circa se habet contra hostes et seditiosos 
tyrannus invito senatu ac populo vel hostium, vel perditorum civium 
presidium sibi quam maximum comparare studet, contra senatum 
ipsum et populum.”— Milton. 

“Jure naturali rex quisque bonus vel senatum, vel populum, 
habet sibi semper, et parem, et superiorem. Tyrannus autem cum 
natura infimus omnium sit, nemo non illi par atquo superior existi- 
mandus est, quicunque viribus plus valet.”— lb. 

“Verso civitatis statu, nihilusquam prisci aut integri moris; omnes, 
exuta sequalitate, jussa principis aspectare.”— Tacitus. 

“Non satis amant bonos principes, que malos satis non oderint.” 
— Pliny. 

It is of great importance to keep before the public mind an indelible 
and indignant recollection of the atrocities which accompanied and 
followed the terrible and flagitious usurpations now designated as 
the First and Second Empires. Neither of the Bonapartes ever 
hesitated to employ cunning and carnage for the furtherance of their 
dynastic aggrandisement:— 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


459 


Comment done, scel^rats ? vos discordes cruelles 
Font que tant d’innocens expirent par vos coups ? 

Par quel droit, s’il vous plait, dans vos tristes querelles, 

Faut il que l’on meure pour vous ? 

Florian. 

Let any dispassionate thinker contemplate, in succession, their 
sanguinary careers, in every part of the globe, and he will exclaim, 
at the termination of his disgusting and disheartening task— 

0 terre! 0 peuples qu’il offense, 

Criez au ciel, criez vengeance, 

Armez 1’uni vers conjure ! 

Voltaire. 

It was the resistless outburst of unanimous indignation throughout 
Europe, and especially in enslaved and ruined France, which led to 
the overthrow of the first Empire—and if the subsequent generation 
had inherited the courage and capacity of their fathers, its cruel and 
criminal restoration was a calamity, which the sword of every friend 
to the peace and honour of Europe would have leaped out of its 
scabbard to prevent. 

The effrontery of these two men, and of their parasites, is both 
incredible and incalculable ; “ the weight of the brass' 1 ’ in their cha¬ 
racters and compositions, could not be found out” (2 Chron. iv. 18). 
We find, for instance, Persigny, on a very recent occasion, remind¬ 
ing his auditors, that “ the Emperor, when he arrived at power, was 
quite alone ; ’ ’ but he omits to add how emphatically the future Man 
of December disclaimed every feeling of personal ambition, and pro¬ 
fessed a fervent attachment to those Republican institutions, which 
he was, subsequently, elected to develop and defend. “ He was 
under the fortunate necessity of constituting his Government by 
employing men of all classes! ” Why, the best “ men of all classes” 
were imprisoned or interned. The catalogue of his victims com¬ 
prises every statesman, orator, general, or philosopher, of whose 
talents and integrity France had as just reason to be proud, as to be 
disgusted and dismayed at the ignominious treatment to which they 
were subjected, after the base and bloody triumph of turpitude and 
treason— 

Ce crime affreux n’arrive guere 

Chez les tigres, les ours—inais l’homme le comniet. 

Florian. 


460 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ By restoring in our institutions the fundamental principle of 
authority as well as of liberty, the Emperor has re-established order 
in the State, as in creating a Government party removed from all 
antagonism of classes , he has re-established order in society. In con¬ 
clusion, County de Persigny urged, that, to assure the destinies of the 
Empire nothing more was required, and he trusted that posterity 
would appreciate the patriotism of those who had sacrificed their 
party to the country.” 

The principle of authority—which, in his mouth, means arbitrary 
oppression—has been established at the expense of rational and 
enlightened liberty, through the medium of violence and vindictive¬ 
ness. But I am far from denying, that there is, at this moment, no 
“ antagonism of classes,” for all the most valuable and most virtuous 
citizens of all parties are “weary to bear” the hateful, hazardous, 
and humiliating condition, to which their glorious country has been 
reduced, and are ready to unite in exclaiming— 

Degageons nous—sortons d’un si funeste Empire. 

Quinault. 

The “patriotism of those who have sacrificed their party to their 
country,” is confined to the most supple and selfish renegades and 
reprobates ; they may rather be said to have offered their characters 
at the shrine of their convenience, and filled their purses by forfeiting 
their principles— 

Ainsi notrc interet est toujours la boussole 
Que suivent nos opinions. 

Floiiian. 

L’or, qui les seduit tous, vient d’ eblouir sa vue— 

Sa foi, n’ en doutez point, sa main vous est vendue, 

Voltaire. 

Plus telles gens sonts pleins, moins ils sont importuns. 

La Fontaine. 

Another Imperialist authority dwells upon the dangers, difficulties, 
and decrepitude of England, which he probably intends to contrast 
with the freedom and felicity of rejoicing and regenerated France:— 

“England is a country where the clergy and the nobility enjoy 
privileges so monstrous as to be scarcely credited; and can England 
hope that the Badical party, strengthened by the colony of foreign 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSIIIP THE BONAPARTES? 


461 


revolutionists, and aided by Irisli misery, would not involve her in 
the general movement? ” 

“ France who has got rid of these ‘ monstrous privileges and 
abuses ’ which expose England to so much peril— France , where liberty 
flourishes as it flourishes nowhere else —France who has for the basis of 
her freedom universal suffrage, and * for enrolling the advancement 
of all classes in the Administration and the army, with equality for 
all ’—France, with her democratic institutions, ‘ the only support of 
durable monarchical power,’ would have nothing whatever to appre¬ 
hend, happen what may, and Italy would enjoy the same immunity.” 
— Times. 

The only props of Bonapartist autocracy are the highly paid 
officials who have been “bought with a price,” which they could 
never have extorted from any other quarter, and the uneducated 
millions whom he has beguiled by the grossest and most grovelling 
adulation, and bribed by furnishing to them cheap bread at the 
expense of the rest of the community :— 

“An Imperial decree, published to-day, fixes the octroi duty in 
Paris on bread and corn at 1 cent, per kilogramme, on flour 1 cent. 
3 dixiemes per kilogramme; the proceeds to go to the Caisse de 
Boulangerie. The decree further orders that whenever the price of 
bread may exceed 50 cents, the Caisse de Boulangerie is to bear the 
surplus.” 

His personal safety and permanent sovereignty are ensured by 
enabling him to control and crush all that is respectable and inde¬ 
pendent in France, through the pernicious enforcement of universal 
suffrage— 

Instrument dangereux dans les mains d’un fripon. 

Voltaire. 

I repeat, that there is not recorded in history, a more foul and 
flagitious enterprise, than that which the Man of December so rashly 
and recklessly undertook against Mexico, ostensibly for the pur¬ 
pose of enabling certain unprincipled extortioners to realise their 
unhallowed and usurious gains, but in reality in order to de¬ 
prive that country of its independence and of its nationality. 
The most irrefragable proof of his fixed determination to obtain a 
paramount influence, and interfere with its internal Government, is 


462 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES? 


the solemnity with which he has so repeatedly denied that he har¬ 
boured any such intention. 

There is unhappily in France a strong tendency, even amongst 
enlightened politicians, to countenance and connive at any wars from 
which France seems likely to reap a harvest of gain and glory :—• 

“It was the weakness of the gifted statesmen and orators who 
adorned the Chambers, that, like most of their countrymen , they were 
too easily fascinated by the pleasure of seeing France domineer.”— 
Kinglake , I. 483. 

But even in Franco itself, this unwise and uncalled-for enterprise 
was deemed costly and injudicious :— 

“Wars are not always unpopular in France because they are 
aggressive and unnecessary, but the invasion of Mexico was thought 
to be at the same time unintelligible and inglorious.” —Saturday 
Review. 

“The 1 supplementary credits’ are said to amount to over 127 
millions of francs, of which there are 83 millions for the Mexican 
expedition. ’ ’— lb . 

“The Pays of this evening publishes intelligence from Mexico 
confirming the statement that General Ortega, with five other 
Generals or superior officers, escaped from Orizaba on the 25th of 
May.” — Times. 

“Accounts from the city of Mexico to the 24th of May, tele¬ 
graphed from San Francisco on the 20th, state that General Comon¬ 
fort had resigned the command of the Mexican forces in consequence 
of the strong feeling prevailing against him for not relieving the 
garrison at Puebla and saving the city.”— lb. 

The resistance of the Mexicans has been as creditable and per¬ 
severing as their hatred of the Man of December is intense and 
indelible. They have succumbed to superior force after a pro¬ 
tracted and patriotic resistance, but are as staunch and stern as ever 
in their aversion to the yoke of their base and bloody invaders :— 

“ The return of Marshal Forey to France will not be followed by 
any reduction in the strength of the French army in Mexico.”— Times. 

Be sure it will require as large a force to coerce as to conquer 
them. 

“The surrender of the Mexicans at Puebla was necessitated through 


OTJGIIT TRANCE TO ‘WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


463 


hunger. It was rumoured that General Ortega and several officers 
had escaped while upon the road to Yera Cruz. The officers refused 
to sign a pledge to remain neutral during the war .”—New York 
Journal . 

If the degenerate representatives of the monarchs, whose domin¬ 
ions were invaded, impoverished and enslaved by the first Napoleon, 
had been actuated by principle or animated by patriotism, instead 
of congratulating him on the ultimate success of the siege of Puebla, 
which lasted twelve entire months, and was far more glorious to the 
intrepid garrison than to the flagitious aggressors, they could never 
have “ spoken peacably” to another Bonapartist adventurer, who, 
after two audacious but abortive attempts to bring about a bloody 
revolution, had, at last, through the grossest treachery, re-established 
the most grinding tyranny. But their cowardly and criminal 
obsequiousness has caused “his sheaf to arise, and also to stand 
upright, whilst theirs stand round about, and make obeisance to 
his.” In explaining to the Man of December the motive which in¬ 
duced them to pay to him at Compiegne the homage of their 
sycophancy and servility, the Kings of Prussia, Sweden, and Holland, 
might have severally declared it to be 

La seule ambition, de pouvoir en porsonne 
Mettre a vos pieds, seigneur, encor une couronne— 

De jouir do l’honneur de vos embrassemens, 

Et d’etre le temoin de vos contentemens. 

Corneille. 

“ Dates from the city of Mexico from the 26tli of May to the 26th 
of June are received. The news is of the highest importance. 
President Juarez and his Cabinet had decided to evacuate the city 
of Mexico, believing that the most effectual resistance to the French 
army could be made outside the walls. 

“On the 31st of May the Government moved to San Luis de 
Potosi, taking all the moveable firearms and ammunition along with 
them. They also took with them 2,000,000 dollars from the trea¬ 
sury. The force that garrisoned the city of Mexico, said to number 
over 20,000 men, was withdrawn to the Cuernevoca Plaza, and to 
intermediate points around the city, for the purpose of carrying on 
guerilla warfare. 

“On June the 1st, a meeting was held in the city, at which the 


464 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


principal leaders of the Church party were present. They sent a 
commission to General Forey, to offer their allegiance to the Empe¬ 
ror Napoleon. 

“ On June the 5th, the French division, under General Bazaine, 
occupied the main entrance to the city, and afforded the Church 
party protection against the excited populace. 

“The whole French army was expected to occupy the capital on 
the 8th of June. Three newspapers had been established, favouring 
the policy of the French. One of these papers states that the occu¬ 
pation of the city of Mexico settles with absolute certainty that it is 
necessary to extirpate by root the Democratic element , and no longer need 
there be a dream of popular sovereignty. 

“ General Forey has issued a decree, confiscating the property of all 
parties who have been , or are , in arms against the French. 

Tu voir de ces tyrans la fierte tyrannique— 

Ils pensent, que pour eux le ciel fit 1’ Amerique, 

Qu’ils en sont nds les Hois ; juarez a leurs yeux 
Tout souverain qu’il fut, n’ est qu’un seditieux. 

Voltaire. 

It is gratifying to learn that, on the tua resagitur principle, the 
Peruvians are manifesting sympathy (which will, I trust, soon be 
followed by succour) towards their aggrieved Mexican neighbours 
and brethren. They have sufficient discernment to perceive that, 
when the Corsican vampire has satiated himself with Mexican blood, 
it is highly probable that he will essay to gorge himself with 
theirs. 

“From Peru we learn, that on the arrival of the last mail from 
the north, with a report of the defeat of the French before Puebla, 
the strongest expressions of satisfaction were exhibited in Callao and 
the capital. That night, on the entry of the Mexican Charge 
d’Affaires to his box at the Opera, a crowded house made the place 
resound with shouts of 1 Yiva Mexico! ’ and the Minister was 
enthusiastically cheered. The Mexican national song was called for 
from the orchestra, the people standing during the performance. 
The news by next mail was eagerly waited for.”— Times. 

“ The Emperor does not intend, after having attained success, 
to quit the country, in order that it may relapse into anarchy as 
the result of all the efforts he has made.”— lb. 

A base and barefaced hypocrite has thus thrown off the mask. 


OTJGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


465 


The “democratic” ruler has developed and declared his unextin- 
guishable hatred of the “democratic” element to which he is in¬ 
debted for his despotic pre-eminence in France, and on which he, at 
home, professes mainly to depend for the maintenance of his usurpa¬ 
tion. Juarez has vacated Mexico, rather than expose it to destruc¬ 
tion at the hands of an unscrupulous and unrelenting foreign foe. 
M. Bonaparte, through the medium of French soldiery, bathed the 
streets of Paris in blood, and would, if necessary, have laid the 
entire city in ashes, for the establishment of his own lawless domi¬ 
nation. 

In every other quarter of the globe this insolent and insatiable 
adventurer is sowing the seeds of despotism, discomfiture, and deso¬ 
lation :— 

“France has long cherished a desire to see her influence predomi¬ 
nant in Madagascar, and indistinct visions of a French colony there, 
with a strong naval establishment, commanding the Cape route to 
the East Indies, may have floated through the busy brain of the schemer 
of the Tuilleries. This may be deemed a fitting opportunity to make 
some progress towards such a goal; but, considering the questionable 
means by which the concessions France may insist on were obtained, it is 
scarcely to be expected that she will push matters to an extremity 
on a ground which, though it may be technically sustainable, might 
undoubtedly be condemned as morally insufficient .”— Scotsman. 

“The Opinion Rationale says that, till very recently, ‘the only 
Sovereign of Madagascar was the Sovereign who reigns in France.’ 
The Emperor Napoleon, in his letter on the organisation of property 
in Algeria, observed that he was the Emperor of the Arabs as well 
as of the French; but nowhere have I seen that he describes him¬ 
self Emperor of Madagascar.”— Times. 

“ The Emperor Napoleon has a great vocation of appeasing intes¬ 
tine commotion by seizing the prize for which the combatants are 
quarrelling; and it is not impossible that before long Madagascar 
will be added to the list of places in which the mission civilisatrice 
of France has found a scope, and the superfluous energy of the 
Zouaves a salutary outlet.”— Saturday Review. 

“The French Government will, doubtless, be obliged to send out 
an expedition to enforce the treaty, to chastise these barbarians, and 
in Japan, as in Mexico, set about organising the Government of the 
country. ’ ’— Times. 


G G 


466 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


At the bottom of every page of his history, the success of his cruel 
and crooked enterprises almost tempts any generous and reflecting 
mind to exclaim— 

Mentimur regnare jovem. 

Lucan. 

Of Forey it may be observed that— 

The creature’s at its dirty work again. 

Pope. 

The felon vans, in which he transported all the leading generals, 
orators, and statesmen of Franco to the dungeon, or to the place of 
embarkation as exiles, for having resisted a treasonable act of the 
basest ingratitude, have probably been imported to Mexico, for the 
purpose of being there employed in a similar object. 

Obscur, on l’eut fletri d’ une mort legitime; 

II est puissant, lcs lois ont ignore son crime. 

Gilbert. 

“General Forey, perhaps, had hoped, that in the presence of the 
enemy (in the Crimea) he might be able to cover over the mark 
which his reputation contracted on the 2nd of December, on the day 
when, along with Maupas’s commissaries of the police, he suffered 

HIMSELF TO BE PUBLICLY USED AS THE ASSAILANT AND THE JAILER OF 

the unarmed Legislature of France ; but if by chance this man 
shall be brought some day to his account, it will not be by an appeal 
to the memory of the Alma that he will be able to avert his 
punishment.”— Kinglake , II. 495. 

“The Moniteur published a short notice, which can hardly be 
called an analysis, of the report addressed by General Forey to 
the Emperor, in addition to those which have already appeared 
on the operations at Puebla. That report must contain informa¬ 
tion of the highest interest, and much regret is expressed that it 
has not been given in extenso. According to the Moniteur , General 
Forey mentions that copies of the speeches of M. Jules Favre and 
M. Picard in the Legislative Body, on the war in Mexico, were found 
by thousands, translated into Spanish, among the objects that fell 
into the hands of the French.” 

This reckless desperado, after having trampled under his feet the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


467 


laws and liberties of bis country, and rudely burriod its most illus¬ 
trious patriots in these infamous conveyances to the most igno¬ 
minious dungeons, might have hastened to his hardened and 
haughty employer, and said— 

J e viens remorcier et mon mattre et mon roi 
D’avoir eu la bonte (le s’y servir de moi— 

D’avoir choisi mon bras pour une telle gloire, 

El fait tomber sur moi l’honneur de 1 1 victoii’e. 

Corneille. 

Such a crime surely entitled the perpetrator rather to have been 
pilloried than promoted. 

When Voltaire had recited to La Harpe a sublime passage from 
the Phedre of Pacine, he exclaimed, “ Non, je ne suis rien aupres de 
cet homme lad 1 It is reported, that, by a strange coincidence the 
same expression fell from the lips of the Prince of Darkness, after 
he had feasted his eyes upon the carnage of bleeding men, women, 
and children, in December 1851. 

It seem as if even his despatches contained unwelcome facts, or 
dubious anticipations, which it was deemed prudent or necessary to 
conceal. 

“What the public wish to have is the report of General Forey 
at length. They feel keen interest in all that relates to the army, 
and they think that there must be some strong reasons for not giving 
other extracts more interesting than that which refers to the speeches 
of M. Jules Favre and M. Picard.” 

“ The Mexicans fought with the greatest obstinacy, but were com¬ 
pelled to give way before the numerical superiority of the French. 

“ The city of Mexico was preparing to resist the invaders. The 
Government had issued a decree ordering the French residents to 
quit the capital within three days, and proceed to a distance of 40 
leagues into the interior, except those physically unable to make the 
journey, on the report of three physicians nominated by the Govern¬ 
ment. 

“The Mexican Congress was occupied in discussing the question 
whether the Government should remain in the city of Mexico or 
transfer itself to some other place. The President, however, 
expressed his determination to remain in the city. He has issued a 
fresh manifesto to the nation, urging the continuance of the war, 
and promising to defend the capital to the last extremity, and not to 

g g 2 


468 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


entertain any proposals of peace attacking tlie sovereignty and 
independence of the nation.” 

“The Mexican allies of the French —Marquez, Yicario and their troops 

-WERE INSULTED AND PELTED WITH STONES, &C., by the people ill 

Puebla whenever they showed themselves in the streets. General 
Porey, therefore, in order to prevent disturbances, ordered them to 
encamp outside the town.”— Times. 

“His principal gain by the capture of Puebla consists in escape 
from the loss of a heavy stake.”— Saturday Review. 

“A French sergeant, writing from Mexico to his friends, calls the 
graveyard at Orizaba, notre jar din d' acclimation.” — Scotsman. 

The following proclamation was issued by the Mexican inhabitants 
of Tampico, on receiving the news of the fall of Puebla:— 

Glory to the Army of the East.—Eternal Eeproach to the 

French Army. 

By the extraordinary express which arrived last night from the 
capital of the republic, we have received the latest news relative to 
the heroic defenders of Puebla. The Mexicans resident in this city, 
full of pride by reason of the glorious conduct followed by our 
generals, chiefs, and officers, prisoners in Puebla, have resolved to 
publish this interesting news, in order that it may be brought to the 
knowledge of our brothers, and that the whole world may admire 
the greatness of our heroes. The news to which we refer is the 
following:— 

“ Between ten and eleven o’clock on the morning of the 18th, our 
generals, chiefs, and officers, who were all assembled in the govern¬ 
mental palace of Puebla, had a document communicated to them for 
their signature, the terms of which were nothing more nor less than 
the following:— 

“‘expeditionary corps of MEXICO. 

“‘General-in-Chief,—We, the undersigned officers of the Army 
of the East, declare, upon our word of honour, 1. We will never 
again take any part in the politics of the country, and will be 
neutral in the present struggle. 2. We will not quit the place 
assigned to us by the General-in-Chief of the French army. 3. We 
will not communicate with our families nor with any person without 
his previous consent. 

“ ‘Puebla, May 18, 1863.’ 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


469 


“This document having been read by General Llave, and the 
question being put to those present, the whole assembly replied with 
one voice, ‘ Viva Mexico ! ’ ‘ Death to Napoleon ! ’ ‘ Death to 

THE TRAITORS ! ’ 

‘ ‘ The citizen generals, chiefs, and officers moreover signed the 
following reply :—‘ Neither the laws of the country, military honour, 
nor our private convictions allow of our signing the declaration 
wdiich has been presented to us. We protest against it by signing 
the present. 

“‘Puebla, May 18, 1863.’ 

‘ ‘ In view of this honourable reply the French commander ordered 
that the generals should he conducted, in the quality of prisoners, to the 
Casa de Insunza in Victoria-street, the chiefs to the former convent 
of La Soledad, and the subalterns to the Custom-house, all being 
guarded and not allowed to quit their respective quarters .” 

(Signed by the Mexican residents.) 

“ ‘Tampico, May 28, 1863.’ 

‘ ‘ It reminds us of the somewhat similar device recommended by 
Napoleon to Gen. Forey in regard to Mexican auxiliaries, ‘Give 
them the post of honour, and let them play the principal part in the 
combats ’—that is, by all means let them hear the brunt of the fighting, 
and if any body must be so exposed as to be almost certainly shot, let the 
Mexicans have the glory and—the bullet.”—Liberal Paper. 

Is this the kind of deliverer, to whom emancipated Mexico would 
be expected to say— 

tous les prejuges s’effacent a ta voix— 

Tes moeurs nous ont appris a reverer tcs lois— 

C’est par toi que le ciel a nous s’est fait connoitre— 

Notre esprit eclaire te doit son nouyel etre— 

* * * * * 

Instruits par tes vertus, nous sommes ta famille. 

Alzire. 

“ Latest Mexican advices state that the French had advanced only 
to Cholula, six miles beyond Puebla, and that the approach to the 
capital was expected to be obstinately contested by the Mexicans.”— 
lb. 

“News from Mexico, vid San Francisco and New York, are to the 
effect that the Mexican garrison, numbering 20,000 men, evacuated 


470 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 

the capital on the 30th June, moving into the interior. The chiefs 
of the clerical party then sent deputies to the French commander, 
offering their allegiance to the Emperor Napoleon. Bazaine s 
division occupied Mexico on the 5th June, and were engaged in pro¬ 
tecting the clerical party against the populace, who were enraged at 
the surrender. On the 8th June, the whole of General Forey s 
army was expected to be in the capital.”— Scotsman. 

Any brave, though baffled Mexican, who has been engaged in 
what even the organs of the English press admit to have been a 
persevering and patriotic defence of his country’s independence from 
the direct or indirect sway of the 2nd December, and the dictation 
of his shameless accomplice and tool, may well be discouraged when 
he testifies the triumph of foreign aggression, and domestic treachery. 

Je vois le sort affreux de rna triste patrie—• 

Elle est prete a tomber sous de barbares lois— 

J’entends sa gemissante voix, 

Mais c’est vainement qu’elle crie. 

Quinault. 

An Almonte or a Salvas is admirably qualified to be the coadjutor 
and courtier of a Forey, or of a Bonaparte. St. Simon tells us of two 
flatterers, one of whom, when Louis XIY. complained of having lost 
his teeth, replied, ‘ 1 Eh, sire! Qui est-ce qui en a des dents ? ’ ’ 
Almonte would say to Forey, “ Qui est ce qui en a de la liberte? ” 
A Cardinal, when wet to the skin at Marly, observed, ‘ 1 Sire, la pluie 
de Marly ne mouille pas.” The mitred traitor, who has seen the 
fields of Mexico drenched with the blood of its defenders, may have 
said to his crafty and callous patron, “Les boulets de votre Majeste 
ne font pas couler du sang.” 

Mexico must, however, derive some consolation from seeing that 
the country, whose troops have been the instruments of her subjuga¬ 
tion, is far more degraded and demoralised than herself. The 
Imperial policy consists in quenching every spark of freedom at 
home, fostering a spirit of discontented vanity and restless ambition 
in the minds of tho rising generation, and kindling in France fierce and 
fell desire to subjugate all the other nations of the earth. Abroad, 
the universal consciousness of his unprincipled cupidity, inspires 
an equally universal dread of his menaces and of his machinations. 

“As the Queen looks towards France, she will see a great nation 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


471 


with one soul, one mind, busily and inscrutably at work for objects 
which, costly as they are, can only be beneficial by the perilous and cir¬ 
cuitous course of an ambitious foreign policy . She will probably thank 
her happier stars that she has not to ponder day after day, year after 
year, how she may found and distribute kingdoms, how she may at 
once bribe and terrify her neighbours, offer shadows in exchange for 
substances, establish general principles and hold material guarantees, 
make new maps of the Old and New World, and gain something by 
arrangements which shall leave no one a loser. It is possible Her 
Majesty may think for a moment on the gains and losses of a people 
that for unity , peace, and order consents to be the instrument of one despotic 
will . She may consider whether, in the interest of the world at 
large, and in bounden duty to innocent and meritorious neighbours, 
any people have a right to abdicate their personal freedom, for what¬ 
ever consideration.”— Times. 

11 M. Drouyn de Lhuys concluded a speech, giving good advice to 
the young students, as follows:—‘Thanks to the wisely and sincerely 
democratic institutions which prevail in France, each of you may 
find his Marshal’s baton at the bottom of his desk.’ ”— lb. 

“This is France—always under arms, scarcely allowing himself 
needful rest; ready to strike any moment—who shall say whom ?”— 
lb. 

“ Napoleon III. leaves all the world in doubt whether he may not 
to-morrow strike a blow that may either shiver Europe to pieces, 
and establish a Polish empire on the ruins, or drive back his armies 
from Pome, from Mexico, from Cochin China, from Savoy.”— lb. 

“Nationality is a fine thing, but it costs a great deal of money, and 
often something more than money too. Mr. Cobclen was right when 
he said that small States were generally happier than large ones. Your 
mighty Empires are very apt to be aggressive, and to promote their 
own ‘ destinies’ in an exceedingly expensive manner.”— Times. 

“ For ten years at least Germany has felt itself menaced by its old 
foe, the Bonaparte dynasty. It has stood fascinated and fluttering, 
conscious that sooner or later the fatal dart would be made, but powerless 
to oppose or escape it.”— Times. 

“ Government would see, in the conquest of the Phenish provinces, 
a solid gain to set off against the inevitable cost of the struggle; and no 
ploasuro probably would be dearer to the heart of the Emperor than 
that of occupying the position once held by his uncle, and of being 



472 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


able to determine the future arrangements of Germany.”— Saturday 
Review. 

11 The Moniteur says that the Government has determined to take 
measures to stop the system of calumny in which certain journals of 
Paris and the provinces, and, above all, foreign journals, indulge.” 
—Liberal Paper. 

1 1 The Opinion Rationale, which has long enjoyed the patronage of the 
Palais Royal, persists in urging the French Government to bring to 
a close diplomatic intervention, which promises no useful results, and 
trust to its arms for a solution conformable to justice and right. It 
undertakes to prove to Prussia, Austria, and England that it is for 
their advantage to co-operate in the undertaking. It invites Prussia 
to make a present of her Rhenish provinces to France , and abandon the 
duchy of Posen and the port of Dantzic, and get as compensation Hanover, 
the duchies of Oldenburg , and a few German principalities , au choix. 
Austria can have no reasonable objection to hand over Yenetia to 
Victor Emmanuel, restoring Galicia to Poland, and at the same time 
proclaiming the independence of Hungary and Bohemia, on the easy 
conditions of rounding off her territory in Germany by the annexa¬ 
tion of Bavaria, Saxony, and a few southern States.”— Times. 

“ Even if the English Ministry were disposed to join France or 
any other Power in a crusade to alter the map of Europe, and to 
establish the liberty of every population that may desire an independ¬ 
ence which they have not themselves the power to achieve or main¬ 
tain, there is a sober logic among the English public that would 
soon compel a return to a more consistent course.”— Times. 

“ Relying upon a fusion carried by the insatiable Jacobins to the 
utmost perfection of a political amalgam, France asserts her will 
with an absolute serenity of confidence. She quietly tells us that 
Europe can only be at peace while she is satisfied, and the boast is 
actually justifiable. Partly from her unexampled advantages of 
geographical position, but mainly from the consummate unity and 
compactness of her political constitution, she can dictate to her 
neighbours, and either loftily pronounce that “ the Empire is Peace,” 
or “go to war for an idea.” She shows her appreciation of her 
privilege even by her jealousies. ' She does not approve unity in 
other quarters. She has declared without disguise that a united 
Italy would be prejudicial to her, and that a strong, well amal¬ 
gamated Power, either beyond the Alps or beyond the Rhine, must 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


473 


be regarded as menacing her with injury and loss. She prefers 
Federations conveniently constituted and comfortably balanced, the 
members of which can be elevated or depressed by the weight of her 
powerful hand. This is perfectly natural. On the European conti¬ 
nent real genuine unity is at present the privilege of France, and 
the gift would be damaged by diffusion.”— Times. 

“ One of the most liberal and important of the French provincial 
papers, the Progrhs of Lyons, contains the following, in a letter from 
Paris:— 

“‘I adore Poland,’ a cooper at Bercy (the great wine depot of 
Paris) said to me this morning, ‘ but I love France better. It is her 
liberty which is my great anxiety.’ ‘ Nevertheless,’ some one 
replied, 1 the liberty of other nations is a right.’ 1 Undoubtedly,’ 
my cooper replied,; but 1 the day on which France shall he completely 
free, the ivhole world will be so with her. While striving for our rights 
we are striving for the universal interest.’ 

“ I take note of this feeling, now prevalent among the people, 
because it is new, at least in Paris. Three years ago it did not 
exist. People busied themselves only with external questions, 
chiefly with that of Italy. But the elections of 1863 have wrought a 
change in the public. Everybody at Paris now understands that a 
people can export only what it possesses, and that before reforming 
Europe we should do well to reform ourselves.”— lb. 

11 If the warlike journalists who clamour for action were to reflect 
on the crushing weight imposed on the rural population by a conscription 
which every year demands 100,000 men, the pick of the country , and 
keeps them for seven years under the colours, they would perhaps display 
less martial ardour in their highly polished articles.* We easily 

* It is a dire and dismal theme for indignant contemplation to see so many 
hecatombs of human victims dragged from their homes to be decimated, or dahomised 
to carry out the caprices, or satiate the vindictiveness, of the Decemberists. How 
few of the hapless youths would exclaim— 

Yolez, conduisez nous au bout de l’univers. 

Quinault. 

The Moniteur will, I doubt not, gravely inform us, that the parents, whose children’s 
bones are mouldering in distant lands, are loud and loyal in their acclamations of 
“Vive le Prince Imperial!” Both the Bonapartes have been at great pains, 
gradually to render their armies more fierce, more insolent, and more rapacious, that 


474 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

make up our minds to risk the lives of men we have never seen, and tv hose 
very names are unknown to us, but tbe Presse believes, that, if all who 
cry out for war with Russia were called upon to sign their names to 
the engagement above proposed, the result would be that very little 
paper would be spoilt.” 

Aussitot qu’un etat devient un peu trop grand 

Sa chute doit guerir Tomb rage qu’elle * en prend. 

Corneille. 

Ce n’est que sous mon nom que tu regnes ici. — lb. 

Et puisqu’ elle a partout un pouvoir absolu, 

C’est aux rois d’obdir alors qu’ elle commande.— lb. 

“I find amongst those attached to the royal houses a conviction prevails 
that Napoleon III. intends some day, when events permit, to march 
towards the Rhine. I have heard this idea so frequently thrown out 
by German statesmen, that one begins to believe that they must have 
some grounds for their fears, unknown to the rest of the world.”— 
Literal Paper. 

“ There can be no doubt that, at their approaching interview, the 
German Princes will unanimously bind themselves to resist any 
attempt at encroachment on the part of Prance. 

“ It is impossible not to look with considerable apprehension for 

they may endure, from vicious and vainglorious motives, the hardships, as well as 
the hatred, which they everywhere endure and inspire. 

C’est ici que l’on dort sans lit, 

Et qu’on prend ses repas par terre— 

Je vois et j’entends l’atmosphere 
Qui s’crab rase, et qui retentit 
De cent decharges de tonnerre— 

Et dans ccs horreurs de la guerre, 

Le Franyais chante, boit, et rit. 

Ces 40 mille Alexandres 
Fayes a quatre sous par jour, 

Je les vois, prodiguer leur vie, 

Chercher ccs combats muertics 
Couverts de fange et de lauriers, 

Et pleins d’honneur at de folie, 

Et chantant quelques airs a boiro, 

Dont ils repetent le refrain. 

Voltaire. 


* France. 





OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


475 


the results of this last note of Prince Gortschakoff upon the passions 
of Paris and the designs of the Emperor Nopoleon.”— Scotsman. 

11 Are the interests of France and England absolutely identical ? It 
is the interest of France to humble, and even to destroy a Power 
which forms, in the present distracted state of the Continent of 
Europe, the only efficient counterpoise to her aggrandizement. Has 
not France the boundary of the Piiine to reconquer ? Has she 

NOT THE MEMORY OF THE LATER DAYS OF THE EMPIRE TO OBLITERATE ?” 

— Times. 

“ Did we pay much regard to the wishes or convenience of Eng¬ 
land in our hurried conclusion of the Crimean War? Did not 
Pussia, at the moment when peace was made, and since then, over¬ 
whelm us with affected attentions; and did we not eagerly fall into 
the snare which her coquetries laid for us? ”— For cade. 

“ The seizure of Savoy, and more especially of Nice, has left behind 
incurable distrust; and the advocates of war for Poland scarcely 
conceal their intention of seeking compensation by the acquisition of 
the left bank of the Phine.”— Times. 

“We know how enormous is the pressure ivhich France can bring to 
bear when it wishes for any preference or advantage from the 
Italian Government.— Saturday Review. 

Little Piedmont annexing in rapid succession, one after another, 
kingdoms, duchies, and provinces four times her own size and popu¬ 
lation, was a sight quite as startling as it would have been to wit¬ 
ness a foolish and presumptuous boa constrictor swallowing one after 
another half-a dozen rabbits.”— Times. 

“ Four long months the Italians had to wait at the gates of Gaeta, 
ivhich might have been taken in a week if such had been the pleasure of the 
Emperor of the French .”— lb. 

“ For two years they humbled themselves to the dust , allured by dubious 
promises, to ivhich they clung like droivning men to a straw. They showed 
their sores in the hope of exciting compassion , they followed every wink 
which came from the powerful ally.” — lb. 

“Imagine 120 persons stopped and robbed by eight men; while 
others, countrymen and working-men, were looking on. What can 
bo said of the spirit or the courage of the people ? ”— lb. 

“There are at present 800 men of different branches of public 
force on the chase, and there can be little doubt that in a short time 
they will be exterminated .”— lb. 


476 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

“ This indifference is not tinged with, any love for the Bourbons : 
of that be fully persuaded.”— Times. 

At all events it proves how little they are attached to that new 
dynasty. 

“ The Morning Herald says:—‘ The scene witnessed in the 
markets this morning was almost a repetition of the frightful fluc¬ 
tuations which took place when the Emperor Louis Napoleon 
shadowed forth his Italian policy. 

“ The French Bourse, to which at present every one looks, is still 
in a very unsatisfactory condition, and appears to point to anything 
but a pacific solution of the present political difficulties.”— Scotsman. 

“ And there is no evading the fact that on his dictum mainly rests 
the solution of the question whether peace or war will be the result 
of the present negotiations.”— Times. 

“No one can prophesy what France will do; for, when every¬ 
thing depends on the will of one man, there are many elements of 
disturbance-in every calculation. It is by no means certain that the 
Emperor will follow a long-sighted and consistent policy.”— Satur¬ 
day Review. 

“The financial advices from Paris indicate that the leading 
bankers and merchants are unable to account for the panic that has 
seized the Bourse. The inference, therefore, must be that it is 
caused either by vague alarm among the weak operators, who for 
months past have speculated far beyond their means, or by transac¬ 
tions on the part of those who are favoured with an insight into the 
Imperial policy which is not shared by ordinary persons! — Times. 

“ La Semaine Financiere, a journal that carries some weight with 
the frequenters of the Bourse, attributes to the Credit Mobilier the 
power of creating an arbitrary value in the public securities, and 
that its weight upon the speculations of the day gives an artificial 

value to, or depresses, the shares that come into the market.”_ 

Morning Post. 

“France does not regard with any particular sympathy this 
attempt to create a united Germany, and French diplomatists speak 
of Francis Joseph’s scheme as a political comedy. The movement 
is so obviously made in anticipation of hostilities, or rather in the 
necessity of a united German defensive attitude towards France, 
that it is not remarkable, perhaps, to find Frenchmen depreciating 


OUGHT EEANCE TO WOESHIP THE BONAPAETES? 


477 


any attempt to add a second great neighbour to military Prussia.” 
Morning Post. 

1 ‘ The German Confederation almost exclusively occupies the 
attention of the French journals. Most of them are opposed to the 
proposed reform. The unity of Germany under the Emperor of 
Austria is considered by them as somewhat opposed to the welfare 
of Europe.”— II. 

“A quarrel with Prussia was undoubtedly one of the great attrac¬ 
tions offered by the championship of Poland, and there are many 
signs that the Imperial Government does not intend the Polish 
question to be set aside without having first laid the sure founda¬ 
tions of a quarrel with Prussia, that can be taken up at any 
moment .”—Saturday Review. 

“ As sure as the calendar brings round the 15th of August, France 
glorifies at once the chiefest of Saints and the founder of her dynasty. 
Englishmen, indeed, wonder at the audacity which could plant 
Napoleon Bonaparte side by side with the ‘Blessed among Women’ 
at the altar of a people’s worship ; and they ask what can there be 
in common between that one’s reception into the skies and this one’s 
elevation to the Empire of the French ? The answer, of course, is, 
that we do not understand the French; which is certainly true.” 
Times. 

‘ ‘ For how many centuries, how many generations, how many 
years, will Paris celebrate together the glorification of one, whom it 
holds to be only next to the Divine Being, and the successful ambition 
of the son of a Corsican advocate, who was at school 70 years ago ?” 
—II. 

“ Imperialism is based on satisfying those aspirations of democracy 
that cannot be conveniently repressed .”—Saturday Review. 

“Every one agrees that he has not rooted his dynasty in France, 
and that his death would cause a confusion of which no human being 
can even guess the issue.”— lb. 

“He is also well aware, that liberty, in any satisfactory sense of 
the word, and Imperialism are incompatible.”— lb. 

“When he looks into the future, and sees all dark and vague 
before him, and when he recalls the course of French history in the 
last century, he must feel how difficult it is for him, by any contri¬ 
vances, to make sure, that, when he is gathered to his fathers, his 
little son will reign in his stead.”— lb. 


478 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE8? 


Review of the Man of December’s conduct (or rather 
misconduct) as to Mexico. 

1. Amidst all his solemn protestations, as to disinterestedness and 
non-intervention, it was his secret design, from the first , to overthrow 
the republican institutions of that country, to extort, in the end, an 
indemnity, and provide emolument and employment for his myr¬ 
midons. 

“ The narrative sets out by announcing that ‘ the first overtures 
made to the Court of Vienna, touching the candidature of the Arch¬ 
duke, date from the month of October, 1861.’ This amounts to an 
acknowledgment that, at the very time at which Napoleon was arranging, 
with England and Spain, the terms of a joint intervention in Mexico, the 
objects of which were ostensibly limited , First, to the protection of the 
subjects of the three Powers resident in that anarchy-ridden Re¬ 
public ; and, Secondly, to the fulfilment of the obligations contracted 
by the Republic towards these Powers, he was actively preparing for 
the total revolution of the Mexican republic, and the establishment of a new 
trails-Atlantic monarchy on its ruins A — Scotsman. 

“ The Archduke did not seek the Crown; it was offered to him 
long ago by Prance, notwithstanding the denial of Ministers in the 
Legislative Body.'’ ’-— Times. 

“ There are strong grounds for believing that the matter was 
arranged long ago, and that the French expedition to Mexico was not 
undertaken until the Archduke had given written assurances of his 
willingness to accept the throne it was proposed to erect for him.”— 
lb. 

“ Both England and Spain, it maybe remembered, at first took 
an active part in the intervention, both being represented in Mexico 
by diplomatists and war ships; and, in the case of Spain, by a land 
force also. In a month or two, however, French management and aims 
began to appear so strongly in the conduct of the expedition, that both 
Spain and England saw fit to withdraw from all active participation 
in the so-called intervention, and France immediately afterwards 
declared war against the Mexican Government.”— lb. 

“ Should the Archduke refuse, the name of a cadet of the Bona¬ 
parte family has already been mentioned as eligible to supply his 
place.”— lb. 

“ Via Havannah, we have the following advices from Vera Cruz, 


OUGHT FEANCE TO WOESHIP THE BOXAPAETES ? 479 

to the l$th ult. :—On the 10th, in tho city of Mexico, was proclaimed 
the Empire, the Archduke Maximilian to fill the throne.”— Times. 

“ Council of Notabilities, being duly assembled by a previous 
convocation, declared unanimously, with the exception of two votes, 
that the Mexican nation, through them, selected the Empire as the 
form of government, and through them proclaimed the Archduke 
Maximilian of Austria Emperor of Mexico; and that, should his 
•Royal Highness refuse the throne thus offered him, they implored 
the Emperor of the French to select a person, in whom he had full 
confidence, to occupy tho throne of Mexico. A courier was imme¬ 
diately despatched to Vera Cruz, and the Milan sent off with the 
news. It is stated from Vera Cruz that all the towns along the 
route of the courier made immense manifestations of joy on the pro¬ 
mulgation of the news, and at Vera Cruz 100 guns were fired in 
honour of the event.”— lb. 

“ From the rapturous joy with which Mexico has welcomed its 
deliverers (? ?), we may judge of what she would feel at being 
declared a dependency of France. His Majesty has already spoken 
of himself as the ‘Emperor of the Arabs,’ and as the successor of 
Charlemagne ; there is no reason why ho should not proclaim him¬ 
self the successor of Montezuma.”— lb. 

“ It would be rash to anticipate that the French Emperor will, 
under any circumstances, pursue the most direct course. It is 
known that French agents have been intriguing in Texas, and 
it is not impossible that hopes may be entertained of the recovery 
of Louisiana .”—Saturday Review. 

2. The adherents of priestcraft and despotism, whom the Mexicans 
had expelled from their coasts, or deprived of all power and influ¬ 
ence, were reinstated and encouraged. 

“A few months ago the venerable Archbishop of Mexico went in 
person to the Palace of Miramor, to urge the Prince, in the namo of 
religion, and of the whole Mexican episcopate, to accept the holy and 
glorious mission, to which Divine Providence had predestined him. 
The worthy prelate had the consolation on leaving Miramor, of 
knowing, that the Archduke would no longer hesitate, in the event 
of the Mexican throne being re-established, under the conditions 
specified by his Imperial Highness at the opening of tho nego¬ 
tiations.” 


480 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


“The Archduke had, therefore, already entered into more than a 
moral engagement to the Mexican episcopate and the notables of the 
country, who before proclaiming his election were anxious to have a 
certainty of his acceptance.”— Times. 

“The regency consists of three members of the Triumvirate pre¬ 
liminarily elected by the upper Junta of the Government—namely, 
General Almonte , the Archbishop Zabistada, and General Salas. The 
Assembly then passed a vote of thanks to the Emperor and Empress 
of the French, and decided that statues of their Majesties should be 
erected in the hall of Congress. A vote of thanks was then passed to 
General Eorey and the French army, and to other distinguished 
individuals who have served the cause of intervention.”— lb. 

“ The measures to be taken by the Provisional Government in accord 
with the General commanding the French army , will give to the 
monarchical enthusiasm of Mexico the development desired by his 
Imperial Highness, and rally to the vote of the Notables the great 
majority of Mexicans.”— Times. 

“ France has used objectionable native instruments—one of them 
an avowed felon of the meanest kind, and another so notorious for 
savage cruelty, that his mere name had become a terror.”— lb. 

La France also says “ that the present Government* in Mexico will 
administer public affairs for a year , to organise the country; but the 
consent of the Archduke will probably be forwarded to Mexico in 
the course of November next.” 

“ If General Forey remains in Mexico, unless he at once takes 
possession of it in the name of the Emperor, he must forthwith set 
up some kind of native Government. The only materials that are at 
his disposal are the leading men of the old priest party. No others , even 
if they were within reach , would serve under the invader .”— Scotsman. 

“ They conquer a country, or take possession of a government, and 
then they ask the people, not what they would wish, but whether 
they approve of a transaction which can no longer be undone.”— 
Saturday Review. 

“ The pretence that a bare majority of a population has the right, 
in a single day, to determine the destiny of the nation and of pos¬ 
terity, would be extravagantly absurd and unjust even if the whole 
machinery of the suffrage were not fictitious and delusive.”— lb. 

* Inaugurated under the protection of Forey’s bayonets and bandits. 


\ 


OUGHT FRANCE TO -WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 481 

“ A more anomalous and irrational mode of legalizing tlie conse¬ 
quences of force was never invented by revolutionists or usurpers.” 
—Saturday Review. 

“ The appointment of Fernando Pardo as Prefect does not appear 
to have given satisfaction ; be is reported to be a reactionist of the 
deepest dye. That the French should favour the only faction which 
has afforded them the least support is not to be wondered at; still, it 
is to be regretted, that a more moderate man w r as not named to so 
important a post.” 

“ On the 10th, Mexico w r as declared by the public proclamation of 
the Council of Notabilities to bo an empire; the throne tendered to 
the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, and in the event of his refusal 
to accept, the Emperor of the French was implored to select a candidate 
for the Imperial dignity .” 

l( The clergy and people of Mexico were represented as being 
greatly rejoiced at the remodelling of their Government. We 
do not wonder that they should be exceeding glad to be restored 
to pre-eminence.” 

The New York Daily News states, that, in the event of the refusal 
of the Archduke Maximilian to accept the throne of Mexico, M. 
Jerome Bonaparte (Patterson), of New Jersey, will be petitioned to 
preside over the destinies of that nation.” 

11 On the 8th, the Assembly of Notables met for deliberation, and 
was opened by a short speech from General Almonte ! ! ! In the con¬ 
cluding paragraph, he says :—‘ The grandeur of the work intrusted 
to you is less easily painted by words than by the spectacle you have 
before you, than by that vast picture of desolation which spreads 
itself from one extremity of the territory to the other, where, amid 
rivers of blood, are only to be seen piles of rubbish and ruins, where 
all is chaos, in the midst of which legislation and adminis¬ 
tration, principles and interest, jostle one another in dire con¬ 
fusion, and where the passions are in open war with society. 
It is for you to upraise this sinking evidence, by laying the 
foundation of a new order of things, where authority will be 
blended with liberty, prosperity, and justice. Thus shall we 
en joy peace and concord, thus shall we enter upon the path of true 
glory.’ ” 

“ The uso of ecclesiastical instruments may perhaps please zealous 
Roman Catholics ; but if the Emperor Maximilian trusts or employs 

u H 


482 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

the priestly party, he will almost certainly fail in his hazardous 
enterprise. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“The Liberal party has, at least, the merit of opposing clerical 
intolerance and misrule.”— lb. 

3. Forey is at Mexico, again wallowing (as at Paris) in the mire 
of cruelty, cunning, and injustice; and the constitution, which he has 
forced upon the people, seems to equal, in point of turpitude and 
tyranny, the ignominious system of despotic pseudo-democracy, 
which perjury and violence have established in France. 

“ The Marshal announces that he is occupied in forming a pro¬ 
visional Government which, following out the intentions of the 
Emperor, will be composed of men of moderate views belonging to 
all parties.” 

In point of veracity, this announcement is on a par with the 
telegram issued at Paris on the 2nd of December : —“ The President 
maintains the republic.” 

That French piracy should have ultimately triumphed over Mexican 
patriotism must excite sorrow rather than surprise. The myrmidons 
of the 2nd of December have been as triumphant at Puebla in 1863 
as they were at Paris in 1851, and Forey has again earned the com¬ 
bined laurels of a “ brigand ” and of a bailiff. That the clerical and 
absolutist parties should have welcomed the advent of despotism and 
priestcraft is by no means improbable or unexpected ; but that the 
entire population should have hailed with transport the appearance 
amongst them of the man who, after having assisted in overthrowing 
the constituted authorities of his own country, has recklessly and 
ruthlessly subverted their own liberties, is an assertion which only 
tends to prove what an amount of shameless and enormous lying, 
under Bonapartist coercion, Gallia mendax audet in historid. 

“ With a heart still agitated by the event, I address this despatch 
in haste to your Excellency, to inform you that the whole population 
of this city received the army with an enthusiasm that bordered on 
delirium. (!!!) The soldiers of France were literally crushed under the 
showers of garlands and bouguets. (!!!) Only the entrance of the 
army into Paris on the 14th of July, 1859, when returning from 
Italy, can give an idea of the scene. I have been present, with all 
the officers of the staff, at a Te Deum, in the magnificent cathedral of 


OUGIIT FINANCE TO WORSIIir THE BONAPARTES ? 


483 


this capital, that was thronged by an immense crowd. The army 
then, in admirable condition, defiled before me, with cries of 1 Vive 
VEmpereur ! ’ 1 Vive VImperatricc P ” 

The Emperor has received the following despatch, brought by 
one of his orderly officers from Mexico :— 

“ Juarez, fearing capture, took to flight, and hastened with some 
troops in the direction of San Luis Potosi. General Bazaine then 
occupied Mexico, and the General-in-Chief entered tho city on the 
10th June at the head of the army, accompanied by the French 
minister and General Almonte. The enthusiasm was at its height 
during General Forey’s triumphal march through the city in the 
midst of 200,000 inhabitants cheering for the Emperor , the Empress , 
and the French intervention. (!!!) The success of the French has 
produced a great effect throughout the country. 

“I am charged to present to the Emperor five flags and thirteen 
banners taken at different combats at Puebla. 

‘ ‘ The keys, in silver, of the city of Mexico, have been offered to 
the Emperor by the municipalities, in a letter addressed to the 
General-in- Chief. 

“ General Forey made his triumphal entry into Mexico yesterday 
at the head of about 15,000 men. After marching through the 
principal streets he alighted at the cathedral and heard Te JJeum; 
after which he stationed himself in front of the Palace, and all the 
troops defiled before him amidst loud shouts of 1 Vive VEmpereur ! ’ 
His reception could scarcely he said to he enthusiastic; still triumphal 
arches were erected, flowers were showered down upon him, 
balconies were filled with ladies, and the whole of the population 
seemed to have turned out, if for no other purpose, at all events to 
gratify their curiosity. 

“ Considering the Mexican people are never very demonstrative, 
and that an occasional ‘ viva ’ is the utmost expression of feeling 
they ever indulge in, I think the French havo every reason to be 
satisfied with the reception given them.”— Times. 

“A despatch from Mexico has been received by the French 
Government, dated Queretaro, the 14tli of June. It states that the 
President Juarez had arrived in that town on the 3rd. His carriage 
was escorted by a regiment of cavalry, and the army which accom¬ 
panied him consisted of about 3,500 men. The following day ho 

H II 2 


484 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


levied a contribution on the inhabitants, and he issued a decree punish¬ 
ing with death anybody who should aid the FrenchF He sent for the 
chief municipal officer, and told him that ho was going to establish his 
government at San Luis Potosi, but that he should return to Mexico 
by the will of the people before three months , and that then all his 
enemies should be severely punished. This boast produced no 
effect. He quitted Queretaro on the evening of the 5tli, taking 
with him a considerable quantity of luggage. Ilis troops, 
which were drawn from distant provinces, were deserting in great 
numbers. 

“Juarez appeared to be very downcast, and many of the deputies 
whom he selected to form the Chamber of Deputies at San Luis 
Potosi had abandoned him. 

“The details of the entrance of the French troops into Mexico 
were known at Queretaro on the 12tli of June. The inhabitants 
then raised cries of 1 Long live the Emperor and Empress ! ’ and a Te 
Jbeum was chanted in the cathedral. The town was illuminated in 
the evening. 

“ Queretaro is situated at about eighty miles to tho north of the 
city of Mexico. It is the chief town of a State which was always 
opposed to the government of Juarez. 

“ There is, indeed, no reason why they should not turn the 
Eepublic into a French province in everything but name. The 
Mexican people were no doubt at first opposed to the invaders , for Almonte 
totally mistook the opinions current among the mass of his country¬ 
men. But the Mexicans have not the energy to persevere in oppo¬ 
sition to success so striking as that of General Forej". Although we 
have not much belief in the enthusiasm of the people during the General's 
triumphant entry , and are disposed to doubt the ‘ cheering for the Emperor , 
the Empress , and French intervention ,’ which do not exactly tally with 
the description given by our correspondent; yet it would be in vain 
to deny that this poor feeble population is likely to submit itself at 
last peaceably to its vigorous conquerors.”— Times. 

In an article replying to the journals disapproving of the trans¬ 
formation of Mexico into an Empire, the Epoca declares that “it 
would not have been necessary to abandon Mexico with 6,000 men, 


* This is only a just retaliation for the illegal and infamous intervention in the 
internal concerns of an independent nation. 


OUGHT FRAUCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BO NX PARTES ? 435 

■when France with, only 3,000 would have left the supremacy to 
Spain. ” 

u The liberal journals demand that Spain should adopt a policy 
of isolation in the Mexican question; while others ask the Govern¬ 
ment to protect Spanish interests by recognising the Mexican 
Empire.”— Times. 

The unprincipled and unprovoked attack of the 2nd of December 
upon the “ nationality” and independence of Mexico, has incurred 
the somewhat tame and timid condemnation even of the Printing 
House Square oracle. 

u We have no word of approbation for the principle of such expe¬ 
ditions as that of the French Emperor, but would rather protest 
against them as violations of national and international right , yet it 
would be too much to say that France is blameable in restoring 
order and regular government in so important a country. (! ! !)”— 
Times. 

France is the very last country which should attempt to interfere 
with the internal concerns of other peoples. The civil wars in 
Mexico were far less terrible and truculent than the revolutionary 
scenes of carnage and confiscation which, towards the close of last 
century, involved France in a sories of crimes and cruelties, without 
parallel in the annals of baseness and brutality; and yet a desperate 
stand was made against every effort resorted to by other powers to 
restore tranquillity and order, on tho basis of a return to hereditary 
constitutional monarchy. Nay, a fatal and fanatical preference was 
given to the establishment of a despotic and destructive Imperial 
usurpation. Wo are assured, on respectable authority, that “pos¬ 
terity has not approved the armed protest of Europe against tho 
crimes and anarchy of the French Eoign of Terror .”—Sat urdag 
Review. 

And yet the European Sovereigns of the present day have 
stooped to congratulate their own most dangerous and deceitful 
“ evil occurrent” on the success of his selfish and sinister onslaught 
upon a people who contemplated his character with abhorrence, 
and resisted his invasion with patriotic intrepidity. If the healths 
of tho Corsican dynasty wero so enthusiastically received at 
Mexico, it must have been on tho principle of omne ignotum pro 


48C> 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WOESHIT TOE BONAPARTES ? 


magnifco. What’s Eugenie to them, or they to Eugenie, that 
they should shout for her ? To the inhabitants of that stately 
and subjugated city, she is, at best, the “great unknown;” whilst 
the Man of December though (happily for them) he is personally 
“ wwknown,” is at the same time “ well known” by his astuteness, 
his arrogance, and his ambition. The feelings manifested towards 
him at a recent important banquet in France form a strange and 
striking contrast to the alleged development of Mexican enthusiasm 
in his favour. 

“After M. Lefevre had given utterance to a eulogium on M. 
Paillet, the Mayor rose and said, ‘ Gentlemen, although this is not 
a political meeting, I beg to propose the health of his Majesty tho 
Emperor.’ ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ cried the Prefect emphatically. 
‘Vive l’Empereur!’ re-echoed the Bishop audibly. But the rest 
lifted their glasses to their mouths in solemn silence. The health of her 
Imperial Majesty was then proposed ; but the Prefect’s ardour was 
so damped by the manner in which his first cry had been taken up, 
that neither that very strong form of loyalty which proceeds from a 
participation in the good things enjoyed by those holding office, nor 
that gallantry for which French officials are remarkable, extorted 
from him anything louder than a whisper when he was called upon 
to respond to the second toast of Monsieur le Maire. The Bishop 
did not show more empressement ; and when the Prince Imperial’s 
health was proposed the venerable prelate was so penetrated with 
the spirit of the meeting that ho thought it letter not to talce any notice 
of it”—.Times. 

The Spanish cabinet has already intimated its just apprehension 
of the increased influence which the 2nd of December may derive 
from the virtual annexation of Mexico. 

“The Pueblo publishes an article declaring that, through the 
medium of the Archduke Maximilian, the intention of France is to 
substitute French influence for that of Spain in Mexico. ‘If that 
combination,’ it says, ‘ is realised, the Napoleon preponderance in 
America will be immense, to the prejudice of both European inte¬ 
rests and of those of Spain. From the day on which that should 
take place the Spanish Antilles would be continually menaced by the 
filibusters of the Southern States.’ ” 

“ The programme of fundamental laws seems to be made up from 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE TiONATAItTES ? 


487 


the usages of Old Spain and modern Bonapartist France. The 
Church receives a power which it certainly has never possessed of 
late years in Mexico, and which is all that a Pope or a Bourbon 
King could desire. The dark side of the French invasion—namely, 
the connection of Napoleon with the priestly party, in opposition to 
the more liberal party of Juarez—is now rather painfully conspicuous. 
The press is to he restricted by the most severe regulations , in order to 
prevent any discussion adverse to the new order of things. Controversy 
on the laws and institutions of the country is forbidden; and discus¬ 
sions on religious subjects must not take place, lest they might compromise 
the sacred interests of the Church and diminish the publish respect for the 
clergy .”— Times. 

“ The New York papers publish the following from Vera Cruz, 
dated the 6th:— 

“ ‘ General Forey has established press regulations similar to those 
existing in France. 

“ 1 General Forey has announced that all who do not lay down 
their arms will be pursued. 

u 1 President Juarez has announced that all who join Forey will bo 
declared traitors.’ ”— Scotsman. 

11 On the 29th ult. the first number of an official journal, called the 
Moniteur Franco-Mexicain, was issued, printed in French and Spanish. 
Among other decrees was one enacting ‘the sequestration of all 
property belonging to citizens of the Republic in arms against the 
French intervention, whether they belong to the regular army or 
bands of guerilleros , as of all others in a state of hostility against 
France.’ ”— Times. 

11 Marshal Forey states that he had sent a column to protect the 
mines at Peal del Monte, which the enemy intended to plunder, and 
to destroy the engines.”— lb. 

u To hasten the completion of a road across the plain lying along 
the coast, he has given orders for the Mexican soldiers who were 
taken prisoners to be compelled to work at it, a step which may 
possibly, at this time of year and in that locality, relieve him 
altogether. ’ ’— lb. 

“ Marshal Forey has, it seems, convoked a Council of Notables, or 
persons of his own way of thinking, and his nominees have, with 
instructive unanimity, coincided in the judgment which the Emperor 
Napoleon had formed two years ago.”— lb. 


488 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


“ A letter from Yera Cruz says tliat tlie campaign in Mexico was 
carried on with, great cruelty during its latter period. At first the 
drench gave quarter to the wounded, but there having been frequent 
cases in which these, when their merciful conquerors had passed on, 
had treacherously wounded them from behind, the Zouaves and 
other troops had, for some months, adopted the practice of killing all 
whom they still found breathing on the battle-field. The Mexican 
cavalry is described as invariably avoiding hand-to-hand conflicts, as 
contenting itself with firing its carbines at 200 paces, and flying 
when the French drew near. A horrible and scarcely credible tale 
is told of what occurred at the Penitentiary, at which building some 
of the hardest fighting of the campaign took place. In the midst of 
the combat, 300 of the besieged wished to capitulate. Their com¬ 
rades, furious at what they considered treachery, handcuffed them, 
loaded them with chains, and shut them up in one of the vast halls 
of the edifice, spread it with straw, among which they strewed 
powder, and fastened, it is said, grenades to their hands. Then, 
when the French assaulted and took the place, the Mexicans, before 
escaping, set fire to the straw. A hideous spectacle presented itself 
to the victors, when, a few minutes later, they forced their way into 
the hall. Many of the unhappy wretches were literally blown to 
fragments by the explosion of the shells that had been so barbarously 
scattered among them.”— Times.* 

4. The House of Ilapsburg, and especially the new monarch, will 
incur the censure of every honest and high-minded politician in 
Europe and America by stooping to accept a crown from their most 
insidious and inveterate enemy. 

The Presse of to-day publishes the following article :—- 

“We wish to speak to day, not of a German empire, but, as we 
hasten to add, in order to tranquillise the minor German States, of 
the Imperial Crown of Mexico, which, according to a despatch from 
that country, is now really destined for an Austrian Archduke. We 
have long been opposed to the idea of a member of the Imperial 
house of Austria being brought into connection with the Mexican 
expedition of the Emperor of the French. Unfortunately the state- 

* The guilt of all these horrors lies at the door of the callous, cruel, and cold¬ 
blooded invader. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES? 


489 


ment lias appeared recently in so decided a form tliat we are com¬ 
pelled to examine the question seriously. 

u A few days after the entry of the French into the old Mexican 
capital, General Forey, the commander of the expedition, instituted 
by decree a Supreme Government-Junta of 35 members, which was 
charged, among other things, to form an Assembly of Notables, and 
with this object to bring together 215 Mexican citizens ‘of all classes.’ 
This assembly was to discuss the future form of Government for 
Mexico, and a majority of two-thirds would be necessary to give their 
decisions the character of law. It can easily he imagined what sort of 
persons this assembly is composed of when Almonte stands at the head of 
the committee, to which Genernl Forey provisionally gave executive authority. 
In all States there have been found at all times traitors who, in the event 
of a foreign invasion, have gone over to the enemy of their country's inde¬ 
pendence. What is looked upon in Europe as the greatest political 
crime cannot possibly be a praiseworthy action in Mexico. The 215 
fellows who, called together by a Forey, have proclaimed Mexico an empire, 
and offered the crown to an Austrian prince, are, entirely irrespective 
of their belonging to the ultra-clerical party, no more deserving 
respect than Liborio Bomano and his companions in Naples, who 
betrayed their country to Piedmont. But the event is not on that 
account less worthy of remark. The Mexican Assembly, in its vote 
on Mexico’s future form of Government, and in its decision to offer 
the Imperial Crown to the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of 
Austria, followed not its own promptings, but those of Almonte and Forey, 
who, in inspiring them in this manner, certainly acted in accordance with 
instructions from the Tailleries. But the Emperor Napoleon does not 
give such instructions without being tolerably sure of his object. 

“The Mexican crown could not, therefore, liavo been declined at 
the commencement in a sufficiently decided and categorical manner 
by those for whom Napoleon III. destined it if this incredible affair 
now turns out to bo a fact. 

“The Paris papers of to-day already announce that the Emperor 
and Empress have congratulated the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian 
upon the Imperial crown which he has been offered. They may 
possibly consider it a subject for congratulation to obtain possession 
of a crown in a country like Mexico in such a manner. But we 
believe ourselves expressing the opinion of the Austrian people when we 
frankly declare, that every man in this country would think the acceptance 


490 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


of the crown by the Archduke rather a fatality than a good fortune. A 

FATALITY WE SAY, FOR IT WOULD BE NOTHING ELSE IF AN AUSTRIAN 

Prince should ever think in earnest of accepting a crown at 
THE HANDS OF ONE OF THE NAPOLEONS. NOTHING SIMILAR OCCURRED AT 

the time of Germany’s deepest humiliation through Napoleon I.; 
and shall constitutional Austria of to-day condescend to what abso¬ 
lutism would not stoop ? And what a crown! The French invaded 
Mexico without plausible ground , treading under foot the independence of 
the people, of which they are constantly talking , and after shedding 
streams of blood have occupied the Mexican capital, followed by the 
curses of a nation hitherto proud of its self-independence. Should a 
Prince of constitutional Austria take his seat upon a throne thus 
forcibly erected upon blood and tears as compensation, perhaps, for 
the pearl broken out of the Austrian crown in 1859, or as a present 
to hold us harmless for future eventualities of a similar sort ? The 
more we occupy ourselves with these reflections the more incredible, 
adventurous, unacceptable, and monstrous appears to us this latest 
attention offered to Austria by the Court of Napoleon.”— Presse. 

The article concludes in the following terms :— 

“ Although the idea of ruling the ancient realm of the Aztecs 
may not be without a political charm for romantic temperaments, we 
believe the times are past when fancies of this character suffice to 
compromise the policy of great States, and plunge it into immea¬ 
surable intricacies. We hope, therefore, that this time the reply of 
Austria to the offer, through Paris, of the Mexican Notables will be 
a decisive refusal. Once for all, we trust an end will now be put to an 
intrigue having no father object than to remove the disgrace of the Mexican 
expedition—that crime against an independent nation—from the shoulders 
of France to those of Austria , and to cover the abyss of the dirty 
speculations of the banker Jecker and his precious associates in 
Prance and Mexico with the glorious name of an Austrian Prince.” 
—Ib. 

“The General Correspondent of to-day declares all communications 
of the journals respecting the Mexican question to be premature, and 
says:—‘ No definite decision whatever has as yet been come to. 
The Mexican deputation does not represent the expression of the whole 
country , and the question , therefore , requires further development ” 

“Juarez was still at San Luis Potosi, but it was believed that he 
would soon leave Mexico,” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


491 


u The French intended occupying Tampico and MatamorasP 
“ A French cruiser had captured an English brig with a cargo oi 
10,000 muskets in the waters of Matamoras.” 

“ News received in Paris from Vera Cruz to the 17th ult. confirms 
the news of the proclamation of the Archduke as the Emperor of 
Mexico.” 

u General Ortega was in command of the troops in the State of 
Zacaticas , and was persecuting the foreigners ? ? ” 

‘ ‘ General Doll dado was commanding at Granagenati, and had 
offered to accept the intervention of France upon condition that the 
French should not occupy the province. General For eg had refused 
to accede to this demand 

The Ost. Deutsche Post contains an article upon the same topic, from 
which the following are extracts :— 

“ 1 We have only a few remarks to offer upon the choice of an 
Emperor by the Mexican Notables. In the first place, we are 
unaware how notable those electing Notables may chance to be, 
inclining rather to the view that the actual Notables of Mexico are 
to be found in the camp of Ortega the valiant defender of Puebla. 
In the second place, we are of opinion that, in a short time, public 
opinion, which, to use a mild expression, is anything but well affected 
towards the Imperial summons, will be invited in some authentic 
manner or another to regard that summons as never having been 
issued. Many may regard such a declaration as superfluous, because 
it seems so exceedingly plain. While willingly admitting them to be 
right, we should, nevertheless, be glad to have an official disavowal, 
so as, at any rate, to spare the Mexican deputation that set off with 
the improvised crown for Europe on the 12th of July an unnecessary 
journey from France to Vienna. This would also be the best method 
of putting a stop to the joy-bells—the echoes of the peals that rang 
in the vote of the Notables—now clinging so noisily throughout the 

French journals.A frank word in the proper place, 

appraising the offer of the Mexican throne at its true value, would 
suffice. Among earnest politicians not a doubt can be entertained, for 
a moment, as to the definitive decision in a matter born of intrigues and 
nourished by invasion and sequestration. This Mexican crown is not 
FIT FOR A NOBLE GERMAN PRINCE ; IT IS A QUESTIONABLE GOOD.’ ” 

“ The Ft 'ance of this evening says that the French Government has 
given its entire adhesion to the condition laid down by the Archduke 


492 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TOE 330NAPARTES ? 


Maximilian viz., that a French army should remain in Mexico until the 
empire is organised in a durable manner , and is disposed to offer serious 
guarantees for the maintenance of the empire.”— Times. 

“The Archduke immediately thanked their Majesties for their 
congratulations on his election to the throne.”— II).. 

“It was as unlikely that an Austrian Archduke should accept a 
crown from a Napoleon as that a French garrison should occupy the 
chief city of Spanish America.”— Saturday Review. 

“ At Vienna, the offer which the ultra-Catholic party in Mexico 
has recently made to the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian is still 
under discussion, but I positively know that his brother , the Emperor , 
will neither meddle nor move in the matter. It is generally said that 
the Archduke is an able man and a worthy one withal, and probably 
he is so; but he has two besetting sins—vanity and ambition—which 
sooner or later may get him into trouble.”— Times. 

“We hear that the Emperor of Austria and the Archduke Maxi¬ 
milian have applied to the King of the Belgians, asking his opinion 
as to whether the throne of Mexico should be accepted by the latter. 
King Leopold is said to have counselled a refusal.”— Morning Rost. 

“ Francis Joseph prudently treats the matter as a subject for per¬ 
sonal negotiation, and abstains from acknowledging any obligation 
for a political service, although ho may profess to be individually 
grateful for the compliment to his family.”— Saturday Review. 

5. America will not tamely submit to the danger of being exposed 
to encroachments, troubles, and turmoils from the unwelcome proxi¬ 
mity of so astute and audacious a neighbour as the Man of 
December, or of an imperial “receiver of stolen goods,” who will at 
once become his vassal, and, probably, in due time, his victim. 

“The Senate of the United States has certainly not accorded its 
official sanction to the precise measures proposed by the President, to 
lend our aid to the actual Mexican Government, in order that the 
latter might, with the approbation of the Allies, extricate itself from 
its present embarassments; but this is strictly a question of internal 
administration. There could be no greater error than to see in this 
disagreement a divergence of opinion in our Government, or in the Ameri¬ 
can people, in regard to their cordial ivishes for the safety , welfare, and 
stability of the Republican Government in that country.”—American 
State Taper. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


493 


“The President regards it as liis duty to express to the Allies, in 
all kindness and candour, that a monarchical government established 
in Mexico, in the presence of foreign fleets and armies, occupying 
the waters and the soil of Mexico, has no promise of security or 
permanence; in the second place, that the instability of such a 
monarchy would be enhanced if the throne were assigned to a person 
alien to Mexico; that in these circumstances the new Government 
would instantly fall, unless sustained by European alliances, which, 
under the influence of the first invasion, would be practically the 
beginning of a permanent policy of armed intervention by mon¬ 
archical Europe, at once injurious and inimical to the system of 
government generally adopted by the American continent.”— 
American State Paper. 

“The Austrian throne and the French army of occupation will bo 
permanent elements in the politics of both hemispheres. The effect 
on international relations, both on the continent of Europe and in 
America, is likely to be remarkable. It may be summed up in a few 
words—a tendency to union between France and Austria, and to 
division between France and the Federal Government of America.” 
— Times. 

VEurope , a journal published at Frankfort, in a recent number, 
says:— 

“ ‘ For some days considerable astonishment has been evinced that 
the Consul-General of the United States at Frankfort should have 
hoisted the Mexican flag side by side with the American flag. This 
innovation might have been an excess of personal zeal on the part of 
the Consul-General; nevertheless, it has given rise to various sur¬ 
mises. 

“ ‘We are now informed that already, some months since, M. 
Juarez, the President of the Mexican Kepublic, had written to the 
Cabinet of Washington, and asked it if it would have any objection 
to Mexico being represented abroad by the agents of the United 
States, in case the legal authority should be temporarily upset in 
Mexico. 

“ ‘ The Washington Cabinet sent an immediate reply to the request 
of Mexico. 

“ ‘ In a despatch which bears the date of last March, Mr. Seward 
informed the agents of the United States that they would doubtless 


494 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


have to represent the Mexican Republic in foreign countries, if Mexico should 
fall into the hands of foreigners. 

“‘It is, moreover, very explicitly stated in the despatch that, 
under no circumstances would the United States tolerate the introduction 
into Mexico of any other form of governmen t than the Republic. 

“ ‘ Our relations with the French Government in connection with 
its recent policy in Mexico are occupying the serious and earnest 
attention of the Government at Washington. Several Cabinet meet¬ 
ings have been held in relation to the question, and it appears to have 
been decided that the permanent occupation of Mexico by the French shall 
not be permitted , and that the entire abandonmen t of Napoleon''s policy 
there will be demanded, even at the hazard of a ward ”—Morning Post. 

“It is evident that no Mexican Government, even with the aid of 
a French contingent, could stand against the undivided power of the 
Federal States. As the Emperor Napoleon must be fully aware of 
the inequality of force, it is naturally supposed that he is prepared 
to form an offensive and defensive alliance with the Southern Con¬ 
federacy. ’ ’— Saturday Review. 

There is reason to hope, that the Mexican patriots, who detest a 
foreign yoke, may still be enabled to avert this ignominious infliction, 
and be supported by the conterminous Republics in their persevering 
and praiseworthy resistance. 

“The unpleasant intelligence has been communicated to the 
French Government, that the Republics of South America intend to 
combine their forces to resist the establishment of any kind of 
Government which the French may set up in Mexico.”— Star. 

“ As many of his predecessors did before him, the President of 
the Mexican Republic—for so, I presume, Juarez may be considered 
until the will of the Mexican people be consulted—has certainly given 
way before a stronger force, but he has not yet abdicated; he has 
not made his submission to the French Marshal; he has not de¬ 
manded peace, and he still calls himself Chief of the State, by the 
same title as other rulers named by popular suffrage. He has not 
yet acknowledged the supremacy of any one. He has retired in 
company with those who, named by him, constituted the Government 
with which the French and the allies originally treated. He has 
retired, too, with what remains to him of an army—said to be still 
20,000 men—and has carried off the treasures. On any point he 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


495 


pleases, over that immense space which has not yet seen a French 
soldier, he may again set up his Government, and continue to exer¬ 
cise his power. To reduce him to submission lie will have to be 
pursued from city to city, from province to province. He knows he 
cannot stand before his enemy in the open field, and he may not try 
to do so; but he will probably continue his retreat, and for a long 
time will baffle the avengers of blood still in his track. He will, no 
doubt, be hunted down at last, but the chase may be long and des¬ 
perate before he gives in.” 

6. Under the foreign autocrat, Mexico will be as much a province 
of France, and as dependent upon the will or claim of the Man of 
December as Italy under the satrapy of Victor Emmanuel. 

“Though the French Emperor now ostensibly gives to the Arch¬ 
duke all that he has gained in Mexico, the new Sovereign under¬ 
taking to pay back the cost of conquest in Mexican money, it is with 
no unnatural distrust of human nature, and especially of princely 
and Napoleonic nature, that people refuse to believe that there is 
not an unmentioned quid pro quo lurking somewhere or other behind 
this excessively open and magnanimous transaction.”— Times. 

“The Government of Juarez did not wait for the surrender of 
the capital, but retired into the more inaccessible interior. It 
has not despaired of the struggle, but is concentrating what remains 
of its forces, and making fresh efforts to raise the population against 
the invaders. Whether years of anarchy have left enough patriotism 
in the M exicans to stimulate them to so desperate a resistance remains 
to be seen .”—Saturday Review. 

The Mexican Generals and Statesmen who have been driven by 
the Corsican disturber of the public peace, from the high position 
entrusted to them by the great bulk of the natives, may well say, 
“ We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are per¬ 
plexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, 
but not destroyed.”—2 Cor., iv. 8. 

“ The capture of the city is not sufficient, if it be untrue that the 
enforcement of such claims as Jecker’s was the chief motive for this 
distant and costly expenditure. It is not sufficient if the real object 
be to guarantee for the future the security of French citizens, and 
close the hideous anarchy which has so long desolated this magnifi- 


490 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


cent country. As yet tlie French hold only another city, with a few 
square leagues, in addition to those they have already painfully 
won ; but it does not give them the vast countries lying far beyond 
their line of occupation—from Yera Cruz to Mexico. In point of 
fact, Mexico is but the nominal capital of the country.”— Times. 

“Archduke, or Emperor Maximilian must be content to acknow¬ 
ledge the patronage of the real founder of the new dynasty.”— 
Saturday Review. 

Je n’ai qu’ u (lire un mot pour vous faire la loi. 

Corneille. 

“Mexico” they say at Richmond, “ is as completely in the hands of 
France at this day as India teas in the hands of the English a hundred 
years ago. Napoleon is the master there ; nothing will be done that 

IIE DOES NOT WILL, AND EVERYTHING HE WILLS WILL BE DONE. The 

French will be the best neighbours for us we could possibly have. 
They will he compelled to introduce negro slavery there; they cannot 
otherwise develop the immense resources of the country. They 
will keep Abolitionists from settling on our Southern frontier. Wo 
shall strike up an immense trade with them, and the two peoples 
will form an alliance offensive and defensive which will set the world 
at defiance.” 

u The Archduke made the acceptance of this mission, beset with 
so many difficulties, dependent upon certain conditions, which, to bo 
well understood and estimated, merit ulterior explanation. 

“We shall at present confine ourselves to stating that the essential 
conditions—viz., ‘ that the re-establishment of the monarchy in 
Mexico, as well as the election of the Prince as future Sovereign, 
shall emanate from the spontaneous movement of the country,’ has 
already been accomplished.”— Moniteur (!!!). 

“ Mexican news by way of New York throw some doubt on the 
statement, recently sent by way of Havannali, that President Juarez 
had abandoned his projects of resistance to the French. He was 
said, on the contrary, to have replied to an order of General Forey, 
to the effect that all Mexicans not laying down their arms would be 
pursued, by a counter order, declaring traitors all Mexicans who 
should join Forey.” 

The following extract from a despatch, addressed by Marshal 
Forey to the Minister of War on the 27 th of June last, clearly prove a 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONARAllTES ? 


497 


that the French army have still much to accomplish in Mexico previous to 
their acquiring undisturbed possession of the country :— 

“ 1 Before I could think of sending forces to a distance, I found it 
necessary first to purge the environs of the capital of the bands 
which I may say are blockading it. On the other hand, Negrette, 
seconded by Aurellano, Carbajal, and others, were organising con¬ 
siderable forces at Tlascala to operate in the State of Puebla, and to 
intercept our communications: the occupation of that town thus 
became indispensable; I have consequently adopted measures to 
provide for all these demands.’ ” 

‘ ‘ The Mexicans have truly displayed an unheard of activity, and 
a fertility of invention, in the creation of their defensive obstacles, 
which, I may say, have been without precedent.”— Star. 

“ In his report to the Minister of War, General Forey makes some 
statements which contrast curiously with his other assertions. For 
instance, he thus speaks about the defence of Puebla:—‘ The quarters 
of Santa Juez and San Agostine are in a state of destruction difficult 
to describe. They have, perhaps, less suffered from our projectiles 
than from the defences of the enemy.’ ”/5. 

“ The war which is still nominally carried on by the natives against 
the invaders may linger on for years. Juarez still reigns as President 
over some of the provinces.”— Saturday Review. 

“ Intelligence received in Madrid from the city of Mexico to July 
12, states that Cobos and Benavides have agreed with Juarez to de¬ 
mand, in common, of the Powers, that the French intervention shall 
be limited to the application of the Treaty of London.”— lb. 

“In Mexico, the Emperor will live among aliens of an inferior 
race, in constant political uncertainty, if not in personal danger, with 
malcontents around him who will have a constant excuse for be¬ 
coming rebels, and in the neighbourhood of a formidable Power 
which will probably not even acknowledge his title. His sovereignty, 
such as it is, will involve virtual dependence on the Government 
which has inflicted the heaviest blows on the House of Austria. He 
has yet to learn the loyalty of his unknown subjects, even if they are 
capable of the political sentiments which are indispensable to the 
unity of nations. The new Emperor’s revenue will probably be 
uncertain, and the taxes which his Government may impose must, m 
the first instance, be applied to pay the costs of the French conquest 
of the country.”— lb. 


498 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


The Archduke, when a crown is insidiously offered to him, which 
has been obtained by force and fraud on the part of his wily bene¬ 
factor and patron, might well reply:— 

Porte, porte aux tyrans tcs damnables maximes, 

Jo hais l’art de regner, que se permet des crimes— 

De quel front donnerais-je un exemple aujourd’hui 
Que mes lois des demain puniraient en autrui ? 

P ENTH AB.1TE. 

A rapacious ruler, who dares not interfere to put an end to 
a fierce and fratricidal civil war in North America, invades a weaker 
and less warlike power, under the pretence of terminating a far less 
ruthless and ruinous contest in Mexico, because he hopes, cither 
directly, or through the medium of a vassal Emperor, to usurp com¬ 
plete dominion there. Even the Printing-liouse-square authorities, 
though they scruple not to justify the end, are compelled to arraign 
the legality and dignity of the means by which it has been, “ after 
an obstinate resistance,” tardily and treacherously achieved, and 
admits that there was a prospect of a pacific arrangement, if European 
aggression had let an independent nation alone. 

“ A certain State, inhabited by an independent nation, and known 
fur about forty years as a Sovereign Republic, has been invaded by the 
armies of the French Empire, and, after an obstinate resistance , has 
been so far conquered that the invaders are in possession of its capital, 
and are there superintending the reconstitution of the country and 
the erection of the Government now under consideration. It is not 
very surprising that such an expedition should be represented as an 
attach upon the liberties of a people and a violation of public law. That 
the armies of a great European Sovereign should cross the Atlantic, 
disembark on the shores of the New World, dethrone the rulers of an 
independent State, change its form of Government, and offer the 
dominion to a stranger, is certainly a proceeding requiring conside¬ 
rable justification in the present century.”— Times. 

“We have been told—and it is the only plea, indeed, which the 
notoriety of the case admits of—-that though all these things had 
undoubtedly been going on all this time, they were at length coming 
to an end exactly when we chose to interfere, and that Juarez , if we 
had but let him alone for six months longer , would have inaugurated order 
in Mexico R — lb. 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 499 

The Mexican war was a crotchet devised by the Man of December, 
to divert the French people’s attention from their own degraded 
position, as trampled on by the iron-hoof of despotism; and also 
to afford employment for the army, on whose countenance and con¬ 
tentment the stability of his dynasty depends. It is sad and sicken¬ 
ing to contemplate, by way of corollary, the miseries which he is 
simultaneously indicting upon the defenceless natives of other unof¬ 
fending lands. The Mexican invasion has cost an immense amount 
of blood and treasure to France. The reimbursement of the treasure 
may bo extorted with usurious interest; but the blood (both French 
and Mexican) will still “cry unto God from the ground” for ven¬ 
geance against the reckless and remorseless aggressor, at whose 
behest it has been shed. It is to be feared, that the unpopularity, 
with which this expedition has been viewed in France, will, in many 
quarters, be dispelled by the fatal and fallacious prestige of success ; 
that hot and heady zealots for spurious and sanguinary renown will 
hail the perpetrator of this gigantic crime with acclamations; and 
“ be puffed-up,” instead of “mourning, that he that hath done this 
deed might be taken away from among them.”—2 Cor. v. 2. 

It is well known that the eloquence of the illustrious Berryer 
saved the life of M. Bonaparte at his trial for high treason. It is 
rumoured that, when that distinguished man descended from Forey’s 
felon van,* the Man of December said to him,— 

La mort a rcspecte ccs jours que jc te doi, 

Pour mo donner lo terns dc m’acquittcr vers toi. 

Voltaire. 

“ M. Lavertujon may cite a precedent when a conviction has not 
been followed by incapacity. The conviction by the House of Peers m 
1840 did not incapacitate Prince Louis Napoleon from being elected 
President of the Kepublic in 1848, and Emperor in 1852.”— Times. 

“ It has been bought at the price of fifteen millions of money, and 
many thousand lives; but it is worth that, and more than that, to 
him.’’— Saturday Review. 

* It is sad to reflect, that this atrocious crime was sanctioned by the approval of 
the Emperor of Russia. There is no evidence to show, that he extended his admira¬ 
tion to the kindred massacre of St. Bartholomew. 

Nicholas had approved and enjoyed the treatment inflicted upon France, by 
throwing iier into the felon’s van, and sendino her to f ail. —KinglaJce 
I. 320 . 


I I 2 


500 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONABARTES ? 


“ Modest politicians are well content with the withdrawal of the 
English Government from the joint campaign, which began as a dis¬ 
traint for debt, and ended with the creation of an empire.”— Satur¬ 
day Review. 

“Nor can this hardly be doubted, that the Mexican war has never 
attracted very much of the sympathy of France. The business man 
saw with disquietude a tendency to intervention in every quarter; 
the liberals regretted the report that the allies of France among the 
Mexicans were the most bigoted adherents of the Church ; and even 
the soldier thought that little glory was to be gained from such a foe ; 
while there was much chance of a miserable end from heat or fever. 
Indeed, from first to last, this has been the Emperor’s war. He 
listened to and believed in the promises of Almonte for his mentor. 
But, whatever may have been the first impulses of the Mexicans, 
they have now, unless they are much misrepresented, pretty well 
acquiesced in the tutelage of France.” 

11 The news of the step taken for the foundation of an empire in 
Mexico, in alliance with or under the protection of France, although 
it realises much more than the most sanguine expectations enter¬ 
tained by the bondholders a couple of months back, caused merely 
an improvement of an eighth in Mexican Stock, the price being 361 
to 371, or nearly one per cent, below the point then attained when 
there was a rumour that the French army, so long detained at 
Puebla, might, perhaps, before long, be able to advance upon the 
capital. Greek Bonds are an eighth lower, at 32| to f, and the 
Coupons a quarter lower, at 14f to 15, so that in this case , as in that 
of Mexican , the estimate of the probable financial course of the new 
Monarch is not favourable , and far from complimentary to the leading 
Rowers under ichose auspices these respective thrones are to be main¬ 
tained .” 

“ The Administration will not yield to the bondholders even so 
much as was to be expected from the brigands by whom she has 
hitherto been ruled.” 

“The task she has undertaken, of providing a permanent and 
stable Government for a country too distracted to erect one for itself, 
is desperate enough ; but it is entirely of her own seeking. If she 
had been content, like the allies from whom she originally parted, 
with simply exacting the debts that were her due, she would not now 
have before her the perplexing dilemma of being compelled to find a 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


501 


Government for Mexico, or, to keep an army of occupation there 
until she does .”—Saturday Review. 

u It will afford a fine theme for the Corps Lcgislatif, in which it 
will be compared by the opposition to the disastrous expedition to Mexico 

an expedition which, after all, must be regarded as disastrous, in 
spite of the recent successes.” 

“It is still by no means obvious that any solid advantage will 
accrue to France from the expenditure of treasure and life in a 
superfluous contest; but the army and the people will exult in the 
power of a sovereign who can create and give away empires.” 

“I apprehend that the accounts given in the Moniteur about the 
sanitary condition of the French army in parts of Mexico are not 
strictly correct. I have at this moment before me a letter written by 
a soldier of that army, and bearing date the 26th of June. His 
regiment, the number of which I do not for obvious reasons specify, 
has taken no trifling part in these operations; consequently, ho 
sj)eaks as an eye-witness and a sharer in the hardships through 
which the troops have passed. Of the health of the army he says, 
alluding to those at a certain distance from Yera Cruz, that ‘ the 
men were dropping off like leaves.’ From the returns, it appears 
that not less than 4,500 have perished from yellow fever alone ; and 
out of the Egyptian battalion of 400, which the Pasha lent to the 
French for this ‘forced labour,’ only 150 remain. Owing to the 
heavy rains, they have great difficulty in getting the convoys through 
the swollen streams. The railway was making very slow progress, 
and the yueriUeros, though considerably checked by recent events— 
the capture of Puebla and surrender of Mexico—continually harass 
them. The writer of the letter is loud in his praise of the extreme 
bravery shown by the Mexicans in the defence of Puebla. He 
speaks of women and children taking part in that defence, of boys 
from nine to twelve years old acting as officers and readily obeyed as 
such, so that the combat at last became a butchery. Famine and 
the terrible effects of the French artillery made it totally impossible 
for them to hold out longer than they did. Every street and house 
were undermined, and the Mexicans fought with such desperation, 
that as long as a room was loft whole they continued their fire. 
The watchfires of the French were lit up with beautiful pianos, and 
every species of luxurious furniture, the property of the Mexican 
grandees.” 


502 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“It is said from Vera Cruz tliat only one-half of the Abyssinian 
soldiery carried off by the French from Egypt last autumn have 
survived the climate for which their fitness was used to justify 
French abduction.”— Scotsman. 

“News from Madagascar is to the effect that the feeling against 
foreigners—especially against the French, it would seem—continued 
strong. The Minister who signed the treaty with France has been 
assassinated; the French have been prohibited from taking pos¬ 
session of the land ceded to them by that treaty; and M. Laborde, 
the consul, has taken down his flag, and, with his compatriots, 
withdrawn to a distance of eight leagues from the capital.”— lb. 

“ France was not likely to stand by and see a project, avowedly 
designed to foster her power and glory in the East, prematurely 
destroyed, merely because the Sultan objected to have his lands 
absorbed, and his people worked to death, by a body of French 
adventurers .’’—Saturday Review.. 

“ This last transaction has removed some of the political objections 
to the undertaking; but, at the same time, it has confirmed the ap¬ 
prehensions which have never been disguised in this country, that 
what purported to be a private commercial enterprise would afford 
occasion for the exercise of a pernicious influence, on the part of 
France, over the feeble Governments of Turkey and Egypt. From 
the commencement of the project, it has been treated in France as 
essentially a political affair.”— lb. 

“For the next ten years, M. Lesseps will have the honour of 
commanding an army of Egyptian conscripts, compelled to labour 
for the glory of France.”— Ib. 

“ The twenty or thirty thousand fellahs absorbed by M. Lesseps, 
will still be driven by main force from their own occupations, to 
display, in the interests of France and civilisation, the industrial 
ardour with which M. Lesseps generously credits them.”— lb. 

A general and just cry of horror resounded lately throughout 
Great Britain and Ireland, against a murderer, who had trea¬ 
cherously assassinated a single victim. Large rewards were offered 
for his apprehension, and the police have, most indefatigably, 
though ineffectually, been endeavouring to apprehend and bring 
him to trial. But if a selfish and unprincipled potentate sends base 
and bloody myrmidons to enslave and massacre thousands of the 
unoffending population in all the four quarters of the globe, he is 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TTIE BONA PARTES ? 


503 


greeted by sovereigns and statesmen with admiring and approving 
gratulations. 

There is not, I believe, on record a more flagrant and flagitious 
violation of “international law,” than the onslaught on Mexican 
independence, which has been perpetrated by M. Bonaparte. He 
made a special profession of the most perfect disinterestedness; a 
profession which is a never failing prelude to a display of the most 
audacious and arrogant selfishness. What right has he to dictate 
to a free community to whom he was the object (wherever known) of 
universal detestation and distrust? Ilis only accomplices were the 
criminal abettors of superstition, whom the patriotic portion of the 
community had expelled with ignominy from their coasts, and whom 
lie has, with his wonted perfidy and presumption, placed in the 
highest offices of the state, whilst the Government has been expelled 
and expatriated, under which order and liberty would have gradually 
been restored. Can an adventurer, who treacherously destroys the 
liberties of his own country, be accepted by any other nation as an 
emancipator or benefactor ? He endeavours to hoodwink Europe by 
nominating an Austrian puppet to the throne, who will be as much 
his tool as if a Eorey dynasty had been selected; and who will 
mainly owe his support to French bayonets paid for by Mexican 
bullion. Mexico will be occupied by a Decemberist garrison on 
the very same principle as Home; at the same time, he, with 
the most unparalleled and unblushing effrontery, proclaims to the 
world, that the Mexicans are welcoming as “liberators” the troops 
to whom they so long opposed a strenuous and successful resist¬ 
ance ; troops, many thousands of whom liavo been the victims of 
disease in accomplishing the nefarious schemes of a tyrant, and who, 
through the medium of a barbarous and brutal conscription, have 
been torn from their homes; whilst multitudes of the survivors 
will, like his Cayenne martyrs, be carried off by their compulsory 
detentions under the influence of a pestilential climate. 

Rien no pert assoucir la soif quo te devore— 

Maitre du monde entier, tu te plaindrais encore. 

Gilbert, 

“ He naturally desires to be reimbursed the large sums which this 
expedition has cost France. The French people, though they love 
glory, also know' the value of money, and are less indifferent than is 


504 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


commonly supposed to the lives of the soldiers. Fevers have made 
havoc in the French regiments; the cost of the expedition has been 
unusually large, and there is a good deal of silent dissatisfaction. 
To get hack some of his millions would he to reconcile the more 
prosaic part of France to what has been done.”— Times. 

“ On the 12 th of July, the Assembly of Notables concluded their 
labours; their last act was to confirm the appointment of General 
Almonte, Senor Salas, and Padre Labasteda as regents of the 
‘Mexican Empire,’ who are to remain charged with the government 
until the arrival of Maximilian.”— lb. 

u General Forey has already been compelled to correct the extra¬ 
vagances of a prelate, whom he had imprudently appointed a mem¬ 
ber of the provisional Administration.”— Saturday Review. 

Vous mourez pour la cause inique 

D’un cruel tyran politique 

Que vos yeux ne connuissent pas— 

Et vous n’etes, dans vos miseres, 

Que des assassins mercenaires, 

Amies pour des maitres ingrats. 

Voltaire. 

“It is said, that the news brought home by the Marquis de Mon- 
tholon is of a very serious nature, portending difficulties between 
France and America. If it be true, as averred, that the French 
army of occupation in Mexico is to be reinforced by 30,000 men as 
soon as the season will admit, then, indeed matters, are beginning to 
look serious. It is not, however, the chances of war with America 
that the French people fear, or rather were it not that a general war 
creates no enthusiasm, no thought of fear would arise—it is the 
possibility of the Mexican occupation becoming permanent like that 
of Borne. The French army, it is said, does not like Mexico, and in 
spite of recent events, the people have heard lately so much of the terrors 
of the climate , that parents have a natural horror to see their children 
depart for what is regarded , and not without reason , as one of the surest 
graves of Europeans ; and politicians look upon the continuance of the 
occupation as fraught with difficulties, and as flinging away the 
advantages which France previously possessed over England with 
respect to the good will of the Americans of the North. The rumour 
that the Arch-Duke of Austria would not accept the Crown of 
Mexico, and another to the effect that Louis Napoleon , in case of such 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES? 


505 


refusal, has determined to nominate another Sovereign , naturally increase 
anxiety. But although these rumours are very general, there are 
people who do not think it possible for the Austrian Arch-Duke to 
refuse a Crown; but they fear, and with good reason, that it will he 
war to the hiife between Mexico and the American States , and that the 
new Empire will not be able to stand alone, and will necessarily 
drag France into the quarrel, leaving England to look on and profit 
by it, and this of course is not a pleasant prospect to a French¬ 
man.” 

“ Nominally, France will merely exercise a protectorate, and 
Mexico will govern itself; hut nobody will he deceived by so transparent 
a mask. The Mexican Empire is set up by a French army ; French 
bayonets alone can give it stability; whoever may be the monarch, 
he will be the creature of Louis Napoleon. The crafty French 
potentate will, of course, give the new r Government a drapery of 
Mexican nationality, just as, ten years ago, he attempted to reconcile 
Republican France to despotism by the sham of universal suffrage. 
But, he will be as absolutely the ruler of Mexico as he is of France itself. 
Mexico, under this regime , instead of being as heretofore a weak 
Power, formidable to no other, will be one of the strongest on this 
continent. French enterprise and a steady Grovernment will develop 
her magnificent natural resources; ivhile political Mexico will be 
France. French diplomacy will control her external relations; French 
arms will back up all her national quarrels .” 

“ Much surprise was created by the statement from Paris, that 
the Mexican General Marquez, has been nominated by Imperial 
decree, Commander of the Legion of Honour. This person, who has 
long been one of the most energetic chieftains of the ecclesiastical party 
HAS FAR DISTANCED ALL HIS COMPETITORS, INCLUDING EVEN MlRA- 
MON, BY THE FEROCITY OF HIS CAREER, AND STANDS CHARGED WITH 
SOME OF THE WORST OUTRAGES EVER COMMITTED IN MEXICO ON 
foreign citizens. After the fall of Vera Cruz, the fact that Mar¬ 
quez was known to be at the head of a force in the neighbourhood of 
the capital, is stated to have spread consternation among all the 
inhabitants, which was appeased only by a notification that General 
Forey had sent orders to him not to enter. It is to be presumed 
that, either directly or indirectly, the Emperor Napoleon will cause 
the civilized world to be made acquainted with the reasons which are con¬ 
sidered to have rendered the bestowal of this honour expedient; but in the 


506 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


absence of explanation it seems calculated to offend the moral sense 
wbicli hitherto has sympathized with the French Government (? ?) 
in their determination to put an end to Mexican horrors.’’— Times. 

“It is true that the Liberals were somewhat less dishonest than 
the clerical party, and some disinterested observers have thought 
that Juarez himself wished well to his country. If, however, he 
desired to retrace the steps of his predecessors, he was never strong’ 
enough to establish order, and he was deficient either in the power 
or the will to satisfy the just claims of the public creditor. Retribu¬ 
tion often arrives when repentance has already commenced; nor was 
it surprising that the political sins of Miramon should be visited on 
Juarez. The disreputable exiles who invoked the powerful inter¬ 
vention of the French Emperor were, by themselves or by their 
allies, mainly responsible for the disorder which furnished a pretext 
for their application. It was their object to recover their former 
position by the selfish betrayal of their country, but it is scarcely 
probable that the conqueror of Mexico will render himself the tool 
of their ignoble ambition.”— Saturday Review. 

u A population is disposed blindly to follow its spiritual leaders ; 
the task of statesmen is simplified by the opportunity of driving the 
bell-wether in the proper direction, and trusting that the flock will 
follow his footsteps. It may safely be assumed that the Archbishop 
of Mexico would never have thought of the Archduke Maximilian as 
his Sovereign, even if he liappend to be aware of his existence; yet 
the worthy prelate has, nevertheless, sought an audience of the 
Austrian Prince, and entreated him to rescue and protect the 
oppressed Church of Mexico.”— lb. 

11 Napoleon has invaded Mexico, changed the Government, induced 
the people to choose the Archduke, and hastened to congratulate 
him on the event. He appears before the world offering the throne 
to one who had certainly taken no active part in Mexican affairs.”— 
Times. 

11 General Forey is still in the city of Mexico. 

“A French corps dWmee is marching upon San Luis Potosi, which 
is held by Juarez with 15,000 men. 

“ Miramon has re-entered the Mexican territory with a few thou¬ 
sand adventurers collected in Texas. 

“ An expedition will soon set out for Tampico. 

“ Few cases of vomito now occur. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


507 


“ The adhesions to the Empire are numerous, but the population 
would prefer the throne to he occupied hy a French Prince. 

“Already have Vera Cruz, Orizaba, Puebla, Toluca, Pachuca, 
and a host of smaller towns testified their approval of the new order 
of things, and as the French are being received everywhere as 
liberators, it is fair to suppose that a monarchical form of Govern¬ 
ment is not so violently opposed to the wishes of the nation as many 
would have it believed. 

“ The Emperor has, the Patrie states, accepted the Grand Cross of 
the restored Mexican Order of Notre Game de Guadalupe 

The Bonapartist brigands, by violently and wickedly expelling the 
legitimate authorities, have plunged many districts of Mexico in 
anarchy and ruin. Whilst the uninvaded and unliberated Pepublic, 
of Buenos Ayres and New Granada are becoming more and more 
peaceful and prosperous, they are adopting the most lawless and 
licentious system of exactions, rapine, and confiscations, 

“In a letter received from Tulancingo, a town lately occupied by 
the French, the writer savs 

“ ‘It is cpiite out of my power to give you a description of the 
ravages which have been committed. Last Sunday all the women 
coming from church were insulted, and several of them carried off by 
the banditti of Noriega, Caravajal, and Telley; the shops have 
nothing left but the shelves, all the goods have been plundered, 
The country itself, however, is what the liberals have more espe¬ 
cially laid waste. The hacienda of Ocatepec, near to Apam, is lite¬ 
rally destroyed; more than 60,000 dollars’ worth of cattle have been 
carried off to Huachinango. Horses and cattle purposely turned 
into the fields have ruined the crops. The cattle driven off from the 
different farms extended over a league of road. The French troops 
that have just entered may keep order in the town, but they will 
find it difficult to save the country—we are ruined.’ 

“ This is not a solitary case; from all parts of the country similar 
accounts reach us, and it is much to be feared, as the French troops 
will not be able to move until after the rains, that between this and 
the month of October sad havoc will have been committed in the 
interior. 

“ The advices from Buenos Ayres by the Oneida reach to the 29th 
of July. Order prevailed in all parts of the republic, the sheep 


508 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


farmers and other agriculturalists were enjoying undiminished pros¬ 
perity, and sanguine anticipations continued to be entertained of the 
results of the railway system now in course of introduction for the 
development of the interior resources of the country. 

“ The Finance Minister of New Granada stated, in reply to a 
representation made to him upon the subject of the English debt, 
that 1 the President of the Republic regards as one of his most 
precious and cardinal duties the thorough and faithful fulfilment of 
the engagements of the nation, not only to preserve, but to promote 
and extend the credit of the country.’ ”— Times. 

1 ‘ The Moniteur contains a short summary of news received from 
Marshal Forey up to the 13th of July. It comprises nothing very 
important. For the suppression of the guerillas, military posts had 
been established at intervals along the road from Puebla to Mexico. 
In spite of the rains, the works on the railways were advancing. 
The political situation of the country was considered to be improv¬ 
ing 

“ ‘The presence of Colonel Aymard at Paehuca has permitted the 
continuation, to our profit, of the working of the Peal del Monte 
mines; convoys of silver in bars are sent thence every week to 
Mexico, as before.’ 

“ The Pays believes itself able to state that-negotiations are pend¬ 
ing with the great capitalists in France and England for a Mexican 
loan. A portion of the loan is to be applied to reimbursing France 
with the expenses of the Mexican expedition, and to paying the 
debts due to the different foreign Powers. The remainder of the 
loan will be devoted to the requirements of the internal organisation 
of Mexico—to increase undertakings which will prove a source of 
prosperity.” 

“ From Paris it is rumoured that a Mexican loan of £20,000,000 
is about to be projected on the security of the mines. The loan will 
be guaranteed by France, and it is said part of the sum is for the 
immediate wants of Mexico, and part to indemnify the French Govern¬ 
ment.” 

“The Juarists left behind them at Pachuca a sum of 200,000f., 
which they had not had time to carry off. The French will probably 
remain at Pachuca to protect the mining at Peal del Monte, from 
which they expect to derive large sums.” — lb. 

“A letter from Pachuca, dated the 20th of June, tells of a sue- 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


509 


cessful expedition sent from Mexico by Marshal Forey, under the 
command of Colonel Aymard, of the 62nd Pegiment. The force 
consisted of 2,000 infantry, 400 horses, and a section of mountain 
artillery. The object of the expedition was to obtain possession of 
Pachuca and the silver mines of Real del Monte. Pachuca, which is 60 
miles from Mexico, is reached by a w r ell-paved road through a highly 
cultivated country. It was known at Mexico that Pachuca had been 
fortified, and that it was defended by 4,000 Mexicans, under tho 
command of General Orellano. A stout resistance w r as consequently 
expected. It was known, further, that the population were ill disposed 
towards the French , and that they had given a most flattering reception to 
the fugitive General Ortega. When the French troops arrived before 
the gates of Pachuca, they were agreeably surprised to find that 
General Orellano had decamped with his small army, and that the 
authorities of the town were waiting to give up possession to Colonel 
Aymard. An hour later the French officers ate the breakfast which 
had been intended for General Orellano and his staff. The popula¬ 
tion of Pachuca, which is estimated at 9,000, is described as being 
composed of adventurers from England, France, Germany, and 
America. The same class is to be found at Peal del Monte and the 
other mining districts.”— Times. 

“ It maybe plausibly argued that an invasion for the re-establish¬ 
ment of a Pepublic is as justifiable as for the institution of an Em- 
pire.” 

11 That the integrity and independence of the new empire shall" be 
protected otherwise than by Mexicans, is an indispensable condition 
with the Archduke. France claims to put down the oppression 
exercised by a Republican tyranny ; and wdio shall say that 
the Federal States of America will not, at some future period, 
try to overthrow what they may call monarchical tyranny.”— 
lb. 

“ The Paris correspondent of the Daily News is very positively 
assured that Mr. Dayton, the American Minister, has received 
explicit instructions from his Government to protest against the 
establishment of a monarchy in Mexico.” 

“ France begins to feel uneasy with respect to her position in 
Mexico. Her policy has been one that neither Spain nor England 
can approve ; and as America does not intend that France shall 
menace her on her own shores, she will soon be told she must relin- 


510 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


quish her intermeddling policy, or take the consequences.”— Northern 
Examiner. 

“ The presence of a French, English, and Austrian force 
may save the integrity of Mexico; but a country whose integrity 
depends on foreign armies can hardly he called independent.”— 
Times. 

“ ‘Manhattan ’ says :—‘ The deadly hatred that is growing up to 
France fully justifies the President in declaring war against the 
Emperor of the French. We will forgive the President everything 
if he will send 60,000 men to Mexico to drive the French out.’ ” 

“ The idea seems still to prevail in some minds that, if the South 
should be forthwith overrun and vanquished, the Washington Govern¬ 
ment will then turn to drive the French out of Mexico—although 
there is scarcely a politician in Europe who is not strongly of opinion 
that even the threat of such a proceeding will never seriously be 
ventured upon.”— Ih. 

“ The New York Ileraid urges President Lincoln to send strong 
columns from Generals Grant’s and Bank’s armies through Texas to 
the Pro Grande, opposite Matamoras, in order to counteract any 
coalition between the Emperor Napoleon and the South, or any 
attempt of Napoleon to annex Texas to Mexico.” 

“ The American minister continued as late as July last official 
communication with the Juarez Government.”— Ih. 

“The Federal Americans will probably welcome the exiles, and, 
if circumstances favour, they may, at some future period, attempt, 
like the Athenians in the smaller Greek cities, to reinstate the 
democracy by arms. In the meantime, the adherents of Juarez are 
perfectly justified in using strong language, and if any of them 
remain unbought, they may legitimately protest against the Empire, 
even when it is sanctioned by the unanimous vote of the popula¬ 
tion.’ ’— Saturday Review. 

“ The New York Herald says there are now 50,000 troops in New 
York, and that as the rebellion is nearly crushed, these troops should 
be sent to take possession of Vera Cruz.” 

“The Times' correspondent at Frankfort says:—‘I yesterday 
passed the house inhabited by Mr. Murphy, the representative of 
the Washington Government at the Board, and in the front were 
flying flags of the United States and Mexico. The two flags are on 
the same staff, the Stars and Stripes uppermost.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


511 


u The Daily News' correspondent writes that he considers the 
pamphlet on Mexico and the Confederacy in such perfect harmony 
with the known leanings of the French Emperor, that he thinks it 
worth while to notice it; and that if Mr. Slidell, the Southern 
envoy, who has lately had repeated interviews with M. Drouyn cle 
Lhuys, following upon audiences with the Emperor himself, had 
received a carte blanche to publish a pamphlet in Paris, he could not 
have written more favourably to the Southern cause, or apologised 
more ingeniously for the institution of slavery than does this pamph¬ 
let ” 

“ The Morning Herald’s Paris correspondent has good reason to 
believe that the pamphlet on Mexico and the Confederate States 
expresses not only the opinions but the intentions of the Imperial 
Government. As to the period when these intentions are to bo 
carried into effect it would be rash to be precise, as it depends exclu¬ 
sively upon the Emperor ; but you may rest assured that it will not 
be long delayed !!! ” 

“ La France of August 30 states that Jefferson Davis has sent an 
Envoy to Mexico, and asserts that Davis will recognise the Provisional 
Government of Mexico, and send accredited representatives to that 
country.” 

“ The Nation says that President Lincoln wjll continue to hold official 
relations with the Government of Juarez.” 

“ A Paris letter of Saturday evening says :— 1 The town is pretty 
much occupied to-day with the Franco-American difficulty, for, notwith¬ 
standing certain assertions to the contrary, it is pretty sure that ani¬ 
mated conversations have taken place on the subject of the Monroe 
doctrine, both between M. Mercier and Mr. Seward, and M. Drouyn 
de Lhuys and Mr. Dayton. As if to render still more grave the 
character of this dispute, and to lessen the chance of its entering into 
a pacific channel, comes the Mexican proposition, that the Provisional 
Government of that country shall recognise the Southern Confederacy: 
in fact, there would seem to have been some preconcerted action agreed 
upon, either between the Cabinets of Versailles and Richmond, or 
between the Governments of Mr. Davis and Almonte or his colleagues.” 

11 It is rumoured in Paris that the French naval force on the coast 
of Mexico is about to be increased. This may be taken in con¬ 
nection with what I have above mentioned, that the affairs of 
Mexico, and the complications they may lead to, have formed one of the 


512 


OUGHT F11ANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


subjects that have chiefly engaged the attention of recent Cabinet 
Councils. There are persons who think there is yet a chance that 
the Mexican business may lead to great advantage for the Confede¬ 
rate cause in America, and this notwithstanding that the representa¬ 
tions on the subject made from Washington to Paris are reported to 
have been very mild.”— Times. 

“ The Emperor of Austria will place neither men nor money at 
the disposal of his brother.”— lb. 

“Will the coolness that has arisen between Paris and Vienna— 
and which really exists, although its degree has been exaggerated in 
certain journals—be likely to diminish the probability of the Arch¬ 
duke’s acceptance of the Mexican Crown ? ”— lb. 

“It is alleged that the Emperor of Austria is opposed to the 
acceptance; that Count Pechberg, and most of the Austrian Ministers 
and the majority of the Imperial Family are opposed to it; that King 
Leopold of Belgium, the Archduke’s father-in-law, and the most 
sagacious of European Sovereigns, is not favourable to it; that the 
Orleans family, who, from their relationship by marriage to the 
Archduke, have a voice in the matter, are opposed to it; and that 
the English Government is averse to it. Doubts are accordingly 
expressed among the public whether the Archduke will venture to 
resist so much opposition.”— Presse. 

“ The Paris paper La France learns that a Council of the Imperial 
Family at Vienna has decided that the Archduke Maximilian, on 
accepting the Crown of Mexico, will renounce all political rights as 
a scion of the House of Austria.” 

“As regards the decision of the Archduke Maximilian, it seems 
probable that this month will not expire without its becoming posi¬ 
tively known. At least it is expected, that the Mexican deputation 
sent to wait upon him will arrive in France in ten or twelve days, 
having sailed from Vera Cruz on the 16th ult., and will leave Paris 
on the 20th inst. for the Archduke’s residence near Trieste, to hand 
him over the decree of the Mexican Notables, and ask him to go and 
reign over them as soon as possible. It is said they want very much 
to have him installed in his capital by the 1st of January. Three of 
the eight persons who are to form the deputation are already in 
France.”— Times. 

“ The Mcmoriale Diplomatique of to-day again announces the 
acceptance of the Mexican throne by the Archduke Maximilian, and 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


513 


adds: 1 Since the opening of the negotiations the Archduke has 

only stipulated two conditions—viz., A spontaneous and unanimous 
appeal from the Mexican people , and the moral and material co-opera¬ 
tion of the Western Powers in the establishment of a respectable and 
stable Government.’ ” 

If the Archduke is sincere, these stipulations amount to a refusal; 
but I fear that he will bring disgrace and discomfiture upon himself 
by accepting from the Man of December, the spoiler of his illustrious 
house, a crown tendered for his acceptance by the most infamous 
characters in Mexico. 

“ The religious element has been most important in bringing about 
the intervention of Prance, and it is well-known that the same high 
female influence which was strained to the very utmost last year on 
behalf of the Papacy was also zealously exerted in favour of the 
Almonte party in Mexico.”— Times. 

“Although the losses, mishaps, and sufferings endured by the 
French expeditionary corps, during the first part of the campaign in 
Mexico, may be considered in a great measure effaced and compen¬ 
sated by subsequent trials and final success, it is by no means certain , 
that the ruler of France does not still occasionally ash himself the oft- 
repeated question 1 Que diable allais-je faire dmis cette yalere ? ’ The 
French people, prone to murmur against an enterprise when it 
appears difficult, costly, and of uncertain result, became more recon¬ 
ciled to that undertaken in Mexico, when they saw their troops in 
the capital, the country generally acclaiming their intervention, other 
nations admitting the value of the objects it had attained, and an 
Austrian Archduke, as was believed, about to ascend the throne 
which he would owe to French arms. All these things flattered their 
vanity; there were official laudations and a new medal for the troops; 
they heard of certain renowned mines being worked for French account and 
profit , and they saw some prospect of the heavy expenses of the cam¬ 
paign finding their way back into the national treasury. Put, 
although the great unpopularity which, at one time, attached to that 
intervention may thus be dying away by reason of the circumstances 
above recited, the French Government by no means sees the end of its 
difficulties , and perhaps its anxieties, with respect to the Mexican affair, 
were never more serious than at the present moment. It denies, and 
I believe with truth, that it has received protest or remonstrance 

K K 


514 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


from tlio United States’ Government with, respect to its interference 
in Mexico, and to its attempt to establish there an Empire with a 
European Prince at its head. But, although nothing of this kind 
has, as yet, officially passed, there is reason for expecting that it will 
do so, perhaps at an early date, especially if the tide of success con¬ 
tinues to set in favour of the Eederals.”— Times. 

“We have often remarked of late that the acceptance of the 
Mexican throne by the Archduke Maximilian was by no means the 
settled thing which Continental journals represented it. Informa¬ 
tion from Paris reaches us that the Archduke Maximilian will accept 
the crown if Austria, France, and England guarantee its peaceable 
possession to him. This is almost a refusal, since England is not dis¬ 
posed to send an army to act as policemen for the new Emperor; nor is it 
likely that Austria wall do so either.” —Liberal Taper. 

“ A pamphlet which has appeared here under the title of France , 
Mexico, and the Confederate States, puts forth the interest which France 
has to recognise the Confederate States, and the impossibility of a 
re-establishment of the American Union. 

“The pamphlet maintains that the American war will only be 
useful to France if the separation between North and South be 
definitely pronounced, ‘for,’it continues, ‘the Confederate States 
will be our allies, and will guarantee us from attacks by the North. 
Mexico, being thus guaranteed, will fulfil our hopes; and our manu¬ 
facturers will obtain the cotton which is absolutely necessary for 
them.’ ” 

“ The nearly isolated peninsula of old, or Lower California, divided 
from Sonora by a gulf 700 miles long, called the Lake of California, 
or the Vermilion Sea, it is said, will be the territorial security ceded to 
France. It contains some 60,000 square miles for about the size of 
England and Wales), and was formerly called New Albion. It 
abounds in gold, silver, lead, and copper mines, and islands covered with 
forests of cedar tress. It is, moreover, the nearest point in Mexico to 
the French possessions in the Pacific .”— Times. 

“The Northerners hold aloof from the concert of nations just as 
they did twenty years ago. Of commerce they only understand the 
narrow mechanical art of buying and selling, and, lest the South 
should destroy by its intelligence, its influence, and the talents of its 
statesmen, the bulwark created against Europeanism, they seek to 
annihilate the Southern States. It is they who have enouraged 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


515 


Juarez, and wlio, even now, still urge him to resist; but yesterday, 
at Frankfort, in a solemn circumstance, their consul hoisted the flag 
of the fallen President; and although the changes accomplished in 
Mexico have not yet been diplomatically notified and recognised, 
this bold equivocation proves that the sympathies of the North 
would, after the peace, oppose by an outlay of men and money, the 
new empire which France is striving to establish.*”— December hi 
Pamphlet. 

* 1 In Mexico there are two divisions of infantry and a brigade of 
cavalry, &c., together nearly 34,000 men; in Cochin China, 1,000 
men. The above are on the war footing.” 

We have reason to hope, that the Man of December’s scheme for 
imposing his own yoke upon Mexico, under the nominal sway of a 
German Prince, will meet with no countenance, even from our pre¬ 
sent meddlesome rulers. 

“ If the people of Mexico approve of the intervention that has taken 
place—if they like to set up a monarchy in Mexico—if they all wil¬ 
lingly obey it—if they are enabled to establish peace and order in 
Mexico on those conditions, I say, with all my heart, let them do it, 
and I wish them success. (Applause.) But if they do not choose 
it—if the people of Mexico wish for the form of government which 
for many years they have adopted—why, then again, I say that we 
have no business to contradict them in that respect—(applause)—and 
that the people of Mexico, however irregular their form of govern¬ 
ment has been, however the country has been deformed by acts of 

* Demosthenes warned the Athenians against the perils to which a free state is 
exposed, by the territorial proximity of a tyrant —oAus &msov ol^ai reus ttoAltc'icus 
rj Tvpavvls, &AAws t€ k$v ‘6/j.opov xvpw *X W(Tl ( Olynth . i) ; and he exhorts his 
countrymen (although then at peace with the crafty and ambitious Macedonian 
despot) not only to regard the possibility of such a calamity as a cause for alarm and 
exasperation, but now, if ever, to devote their attention to war, not only by liberal 
contributions, but by personal service in the field, and bringing all their resources 
into play. America has, at least, has much to dread from the vicinity of the Man of 
December, who, wherever he obtains a footing, spreads distrust, discontent, and 
dissension around him, and is more to be deprecated as an ally, than any other 
Power is to be dreaded as an enemy. The puppet Emperor would bo as complete 
the satrap and satellite of the nephew, as the pseudo monarchs of Spain and Naples 
were to the uncle, during the awful and humiliatiing crisis of his pride and pre¬ 


eminence. 


K K 2 


516 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


robbery and violence, yet I do not think we ought to interfere with 
their own choice of their own form of government.”— Earl Russell. 

It would have been well if the noble Earl had defined what he 
means by u the people;” and stated whether he refers to universal 
suffrage, carried out under the auspices of a junta of disreputable 
adventurers, incorporated and installed by the unscrupulous accom¬ 
plice of the Man of December. 

u There is not the smallest reason for English interference in the affairs 
of Mexico. A passive and not unfriendly acquiescence in the enter¬ 
prise of the Emperor of the Erench has been prescribed by circum¬ 
stances, or rather by the absence of any interest or duty which could 
have warranted a more decisive course.”— Saturday Review. 

u The people of England have no sufficient motive for involving them¬ 
selves in Mexican troubles , and the bondholders must take their chance 
with the still more unfortunate creditors of Spain, of Greece, and of 
Florida. The armed intervention which was provoked by the mis¬ 
conduct of Mexico, was terminated by the Convention of Coledad, 
and France dissolved the alliance by refusing to negotiate with the 
existing Government.”— lb. 

“ The prospects of Mexican stability and prosperity are not so 
encouraging as to warrant any reliance on the fortunes of the new 
Empire. With the aid of the United States, malcontents may con¬ 
stantly disturb the Government by intrigue and revolt; and the 
Mexican character will not have been permanently changed by the 
establishment of an effective military police in the capital.”— lb. 

“A letter from Vienna, in the Courrier du Dimanche , affirms very 
positively that the Archduke Maximilian has not yet accepted the 
Mexican Crown, that he is personally well-disposed to do so, and 
that the Austrian Government treats the affair as purely private ; but 
that there is one condition without which he would hardly venture 
to accept it:—France appears disposed to consent to that condition; 
but England , who shows herself more than indifferent to the Archduke’s 
candidature , refuses to grant even a moral guarantee to the new Empire. 
Hence doubts and hesitations, which are increased by the almost hos¬ 
tile attitude of the whole American continent against the establishment of 
a monarchy in the midst of so many republics. — Times. 

“ This enterprise brings him at once theoretically, and must ulti- 
- rnately bring him actually, into conflict with American claims and 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BOXAPARTES? 


517 


American ambition ; and we certainly are not called upon either by duty , 
policy, or necessity, to talce part in the strife.”—Speech of a Member of 
Parliament. 

11 As far as our influence could be exerted, it lias been employed 
to modify the policy which the immediate adherents of the French in 
Mexico might be disposed to adopt, and to secure a certain ingre¬ 
dient of constitutionalism in the new Empire.”— Scotsman. 

il France had conceived the notion of engrafting* a new order of 
things on one of the old parties in the country, not without a leaning 
to the principles which we least approved .” 

“The only difficulty raised by the Ministers of Queen Victoria 
arose from the apprehension, that the new Mexican Government 
might allow itself to be carried away by the influence of the high 
clergy, to revoke the measures relating to the sale of the landed 
property which belonged to the religious bodies. But it has been 
easy to convince them that the Mexican Episcopate can boast of men 
who are partisans of a wise progress (!!!), and who have declared 
that in the interest of concord it is necessary to accept accomplished 
facts, and not to molest in any way the purchasers of ecclesiastical 
property. ”— Decemberist Organ. 

“ It is asserted, that the English Cabinet did not conceal the satis¬ 
faction with which it received these tranquillising explanations.”*'* 

—II. 

11 England has promised henceforth, to favour, by every means, the 
realisation of the loan necessary to place Mexico in a position to 
fulfil her engagements abroad, and to insure the regularity of the 
different administrations at home.”— lb. 

11 The French Emperor has rather a delicate business on hand in 
Mexico. The transaction is ripening fast, and must soon attain 
completion. Till the Mexican Empire is settled and recognised, and 
till the Northern States are clearly seen to intend to strike no blow, 
at least at present, for the Monroe doctrine, the Emperor will be, 
not unnaturally, reluctant to commit himself to a great European 
conflict. Even had the present aspect of the Polish question been 
developed earlier in the season, Napoleon would probably have held 

* This statement, if copied from the Moniteur , is more likely to be false than true; 
and is quite inconsistent with Earl Russell’s express and emphatic declaration of 
absolute neutrality and non-interference on the part of Britain, 


518 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


back from active operations while the affairs of Mexico embarrassed 
him.”— Scotsman. 

“It is thought, under tlio circumstances, that Mr. Seward will 
trust to the chapter of accidents, and especially to the chance that 
the Archduke Maximilian may refuse the perilous dignity; and, in 
default of any one else, that not even Mr. (or Prince Patterson) 
Bonaparte, will lend himself to the schemes of his cousin of the 
Tuilleries. But the feeling of anger is none the less hitter ; and it seems 
to be at this moment the predominant one among American poli¬ 
ticians—professional and non-professional—and of all ranks and 
degrees of men.”— Ih. 

“The Missouri State Convention has urged the Government to resist 
French influence in Mexico.”—Conservative Paper. 

“ It is said that Mr. P. M. T. Hunter will proceed to Mexico as 
Confederate representative to organise an immediate alliance with 
the South, recognising the Archduke Maximilian, in return for which 
it is supposed Mexico will recognise the South .”—Conservative Paper. 

u The French ruler is known to have been keenly irritated in his 
dynastic susceptibilities by the reception of the Orleanist princes * 
and their participation in the campaigns of the Northern armies, 
and to have been greatly exasperated in his national pride by the 
enunciation of the Monroe doctrine.”— lb. 

“A correspondent of the Tribune at Washington, writes that it is 
rumoured in diplomatic circles that M. Juarez, late President of 
Mexico, is incognito in that city. lie is reported to have had several 
interviews with Mr. Seward, to whom he has proposed a plan, with 
the assistance of the Federal Government, for the expulsion of the 
French from Mexico.” 

“ Even the most reflecting and host informed politicians among the 
Federals now begin to confidently hope that the Confederate States, 
though suffered to secede, must consent to accept the Mississippi as 
their western boundary—then the United States, as possessors of 
Texas and New Mexico, become, as before, conterminous with the 


* “ The retention of tlie name of the Orleans King, as applied to a street, will 
hardly alone for the unjust confiscation of the estates of the Orleans family, and is, 
indeed, the giving of a stone where bread was required. This sort of adulation, 
however, is rife at the present day, and one is often shoched to sec men of whom 
better things might have been hoped stooping to adopt it.” — Times. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


519 


new Franco-Mexican empire, and inevitably, therefore, its rival and 
its foe.” 

“ Mexican advices, via San Francisco, state that the Imperial press 
continually foreshadows the intentions of the triumvirate to recog¬ 
nise the Confederate States as soon as the news of the Archduke 
Maximilian’s acceptance of the Crown shall have reached Mexico.” 
Conservative Caper. 

“ It is stated from San Luis Potosi—the seat of the Juarez Govern¬ 
ment—that the representatives of all the South American Republics 
had not only refused to recognise the temporary Government estab¬ 
lished in Mexico by the French, but had further taken the grave 
step of agreeing to form with Juarez a ‘ continental alliance ’ against 
European encroachment—inviting the co-operation of the Federal 
Government in their project.”— Scotsman. 

“ News from the city of Mexico to the same day, states thal the 
Triumvirate had invited foreign ambassadors to recognise it as the 
general Government. Federal and Central American Ministers replied 
that they must acknowledge the Juarez Administration until further 
instructions from their Governments.”— Conservative Paper. 

“ The Ministers of the United States, and of the Central American 
Governments, have declared that they ‘ must recognise the Govern¬ 
ment of Juarez till otherwise instructed.’ ”— Scotsman. 

“The Mexican question is, of course, a prominent topic; but it is 
evidently the object of the political writers in the United States not 
to aggravate the mortification felt, but rather to prepare the way for 
submission to it.”— Times. 

“Reports are still conflicting as to the decision of the Archduke 
Maximilian with respect to the proffered Imperial Crown. All that 
I can possibly tell you on the subject is, that the persons most 
interested, some of the principal Mexicans now in Europe, are so 
confident of its acceptance as to tempt one to believe in the previous 
concert , dating for a long time bade , which has been repeatedly alleged 
to exist.” — lb. 

11 The public is still in great uncertainty as to the decision of the 
Archduke Maximilian in the matter of Mexico. Opinions are very 
conflicting upon the subject. It is known that the Pritish Government 
refuses to join in a guarantee of the new empire .”— lb. 

“Place-hunters for Mexico. —We read in the Nation: —‘If it 
be really true that the Archduke Maximilian has decided on accept- 


520 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPAliTES ? 


ing tlie throne of Mexico, he will not require the protection of the 
French troops, as he may organise a formidable army simply with the 
crowd of place-hunters eager for appointments in the new Umpire. Our 
Vienna correspondent writes that thousands of such applications 
have been made. Letters are daily arriving from all parts of the world 
at the residence of the future Emperor in such numbers , that it would 
require a fleet to convey to Mexico all the parties ivho proffer their services. 
It is now easy to understand why many journals in Austria and else¬ 
where so pressingly recommend the Archduke to venture on this 
distant undertaking’.’ ” 

The epithet “ Felix,” can scarcely he applied to Mexico, if swarms 
of foreign locusts and leeches are to fatten themselves upon its blood. 

“ The French General of the army of occupation ivill, during his stay , 
exercise the real powers of Government , but it will be scarcely possible 
to maintain a permanent garrison in Mexico as well as in Borne.”—- 
Saturday Review. 

“ The Archduke Maximilian will appear on the scene, surrounded 
by French troops , and such of his subjects as prefer the fortunes of 
the Austrian Prince to ex-President Juarez, who is negotiating with 
Washington for a very different programme, and, American Consuls 
say, with success .”—Conservative Paper. 

“ A French army , consisting of some 25,000 men t will remain in 
Mexico until the Sovereign shall have time to organise native mate¬ 
rial for supporting the throne, maintaining order, and consolidating 
a respectable Government.”— Scotsman. 

“ The additional rise of Mexican bonds is consequent on the state¬ 
ments in the French papers that England is in favour of the accept¬ 
ance of the throne by the Archduke Maximilian; that a loan is to 
be effected after the proclamation of the empire; and that 8,000 
Irish troops are to form part of the new army. The latter plan being 
especially calculated to prevent the United States from undertaking, 
by the aid of mercenaries, any aggression on the new monarchy.”— 
Times. 

“ General Lebreuf succeeds to the command in Mexico, vice 
General Forey, absent on leave. France is quite the 1 benevolent 
parent ,’ and a giver of good gifts to Young Mexico. Yesterday it was 
soldiers—to-day it is a naval school presided over by a French officer; 
several vessels built in French harbours; and, finally, twenty-two 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


521 


French officers of both services, who have applied for leave to marry 
Mexican ladies! The Archduke has appointed Mirawan as the place, 
and the 25th of September as the day, for receiving the Mexican 
deputation. ’ *— Liberal Paper. 

“ Later news from Mexico states that another campaign was in 
preparation, and that Miramon teas to command a division .” 

“ The Peruvian Minister had been ordered by General Forey to quit 
the country , for having written a letter to President Juarez (!!!). 

“ If, in process of time, the Emperor of Mexico can free himself 
from French influence altogether , while not quite losing his claim upon 
French support should need be, he will bo less bound to a line of 
policy that may prove too restrictive for the honour of his people. A 
nation accustomed to licence cannot all at once submit quietly to 
severe repression.”— Scotsman. 

“It is believed that the Minister of Finance, in his report, will 
take credit for the first payment to be made by the Mexican Government 
towards the expense of the French expedition .”— lb. 

II leur apprit a leurs depens 

Que Ton ne doit jamais avoir de confiance 

En cenx qui sont mangeurs de gens. 

La Fontaine, 

The Morning Herald says :—“ It is said that six or seven pro¬ 
posals by the principal French capitalists, including the Credit 
Mobilier and the International Financial Companies, have been sent 
in to the Minister of Finance at Paris to arrange the proposed large 
loan for Mexico.” 

“ Although, after the recent nomination of the Mexican General 
Marquez as Commander of the French Legion of Honour, the 

PUBLIC CANNOT FEEL SURPRISED AT ANY ANNOUNCEMENT THAT MAY NOW 
BE MADE WITH REGARD TO THE CHIEFS BY WHOM THE WORST OUTRAGES 
AGAINST HUMANITY AND CIVILISATION HAVE FOR YEARS PAST BEEN COM¬ 
MITTED in Mexico, the statement that Miramon has been appointed 
by General Forey, commander of the Mexican Forces, has been 
received with regret. Miramon is the person by whom the burglary 
was committed at the British Legation in 1861, when £110,000 in 
specie was stolen. Each statement of this hind increases the feeling of 
congratulation at England having withdrawn from all share in the inter¬ 
vention . ”— Times. 


522 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ Miramon arrived in this city about a fortnight back. On the 
30tli of July he addressed a note to General Forey, fully approving 
all that had been done, and giving in his adhesion to the Empire. 
His services have since been accepted by the Begency ; but whether 
the cause will be much strengthened thereby may very fairly be doubted .”— 
Times. 

(( If the French, notwithstanding their victory, are forced to employ 
the basest of Mexican factions , the promised regeneration of Mexico 
would seem to be indefinitely distant.” —Saturday Review. 

i ‘ It is true that the pacification of the country is not yet completed; 
that some chieftains are still in arms , and threaten a prolonged guerilla 
resistance; that exception may be taken to the authority of the assembly 
which declared for an Imperial regime, and invited a European Prince to 
fill the throne; that the new Government has not yet been recognised 
by foreign Powers; and that it is not absolutely certain that the 
Emperor who has been chosen will definitively resolve to accept the 
offered throne.”— Conservative Paper. 

“ Since the last report received by the Minister of War, no parti¬ 
cular change has taken place in the state of affairs. The military 
operations have been chiefly the pursuit of the guerilla bands which 
are spread in the neighbourhood of Mexico, and the occupation of 
various points, as Apam, Teotihuacan, and Tlalpan, which enables 
us to form a sufficiently extended rayon to protect the populations 
from brigandage .”* (? ? ?).—French Paper . 

“ Juarez himself was rather weak than guilty; and some impartial 
witnesses of his conduct have even believed that, although he was a 
Mexican President, he was personally honest. The party which he 
led was opposed to clerical rapacity and intolerance , and if it had been 
strong enough to restore order , it might , perhaps , have promoted the public 
prosperity. Almonte and Miramon are dangerous supporters or 

SERVANTS OF THE NEW DYNASTY, ESPECIALLY AS THEY WILL BE BACKED 

by all the ecclesiastical influences which can be brought to bear 
on French or Austrian policy.” —Saturday Review. 

A large proportion of the most experienced and enlightened 
politicians in France entirely disapprove of the Man of December’s 
imprudent and impolitic invasion. 

* Brigandage appears to indicate, according to Decemberist etymologists, opposi¬ 
tion in any quarter to Bonapartist power and predominance. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


523 


“ The civil war in America is not near its end, but seems as if it 
would leave us the time necessary to establish the bases of the New 
Mexican establishment Once the way over, especially if that should bo 
soon, the perils of our enterprise are manifest. The popular passions 
in America would turn from Canada to Mexico. In a country where 
power belongs to him who bids the highest in flatteries addressed to 
the passions of the mob, the presidency would quickly fall to the party 
most hostile to the new Mexican Constitution. The military element 
will survive the civil war ; there will remain a multitude of unemployed 
generals and officers ; a thousand influences will drive the powers that 
be to insure by force of arms the triumph of the Monroe doctrine. 

u A dangerous and laborious antagonism with the United States—such 
is the perspective placed before us by the result of the expedition to 
Mexico. The question is to know whether, in lieu of driving it off 
as far as possible into the future, so as to have time to quit Mexico 
before it breaks out, we shall go and provoke it at once by recog¬ 
nising the Confederate States, and thus bringing on a war with the 
United States, a cruel conflict , in ivhich victory itself would be fatal to 
us, since it would destroy one of the strongest creations of French 
policy, and one of those most useful to our country.”— Revue des 
Deux Mondes. 

(l By endeavouring to found an empire in Mexico it is unfortu¬ 
nately true that we gratuitously create an antgonism between American 
patriotism and France. Since, however, we are in Mexico, and that 
we can only hope gradually to get away from it by establishing the 
empire to the profit of Archduke Maximilian, good sense and skill 
would consist in averting and postponing to the utmost the difficul¬ 
ties inherent to our situation.”— lb. 

(( M. de Montholon, who was recalled to France expressly to be 
consulted on the Mexican question, declares himself decidedly in 
favour of the recognition of the Southern States. This diplomatist 
expressed himself as follows to the Emperor‘ If, sire, you wish 
to create a permanent government in Mexico, you mnst obtain some 
firm point d'appui, and this the Southern States can alone afford you. 
You must run the hazard of a war with the Northern States , which, 
however, the Northerners will endeavour to avoid. But if you will 
not recognise the Southern States, you may renounce the idea of 
founding a throne in Mexico, and give up the conquered kingdom 
to the Federal States on favourable conditions. Mexico will rejoice 


524 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


in republican liberty under the flag of the United States. You then, 
sire, will have the glory of having accomplished the mission of civil¬ 
isation in both hemispheres, and given a brilliant example of yonr 
disinterestedness; but a new and durable kingdom you will not 
have created.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ As it was notorious that agents of Doblado had been in com¬ 
munication with the French authorities, and as rumour had gone so 
far as to assert that arrangements satisfactory to all parties w r ere on 
the point of being concluded, we were not a little surprised to find 
that, on the 28th of July, Doblado himself had issued a manifesto to 
the inhabitants of the State of Gruanaxuato denouncing the French 
expedition as one of conquest , and avowing his determination to fight to 
the last drop of his blood in the cause of liberty and independence .—- 
Times. 

“ He says :—‘It is true w r e have committed innumerable errors, 
and that all parties, dragged along in the revolutionary whirlwind, 
have failed in their administrative theories. But Mexicans alone 
have a right to complain, and to reproach themselves with what has 
happened. The stranger has no right to take cognizance of our domestic 
dissensions , and he has a still less right to bring accusations against us in 
respect of acts committed in the exercise of national sovereignty .’— lb. 

“ Senor Fuente, one of Juarez’s Ministers, has also addressed a 
note to all 1 friendly Powers,’ protesting against the acts of the 
Assembly of Notables and the recognition of the Regency or Empire f 
—lb. 

“The Archduke Maximilian has not, after all, at once accepted 
the throne of Mexico. Eecent announcements led to the inference 
that his doing so was to be a mere matter of form; but, in reply to 
the Mexican deputation that waited on His Highness on Saturday, 
he virtually declined their offer of the Crown till certain conditions 
necessary to his acceptance had been fulfilled. These, though 
prominently enough stated all along, have not heretofore had so 
much weight attached to them. They are chiefly, that there should 
be ‘ a spontaneous expression of the wishes of the whole nation ’ in 
his favour; and that France and England should co-operate in 
furnishing guarantees for the stability of the throne. So far is the 
Archduke from regarding the deputation as authorised to make him such 
an offer of the crown as he could unreservedly acccept, that he expressly 
desires them to carry back his declarations to their fellow-citizens, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


525 


and to 1 ACT IN such a manner that it may become possible por 

TnE NATION TO DECLARE WHAT FORM OF GOVERNMENT IT DESIRES TO 

have.’ Among those declarations was one of liis purpose—should 
the conditions already stated ho complied with, and should Provi¬ 
dence so call him to his high mission—to establish a Constitutional 
Government in Mexico, and after the complete pacification of the 
country, to ‘ seal the fundamental law with an oath.’ ”— Scotsman. 

This declaration, if fairly and fully carried out, reflects great 
credit upon the discretion and discernment of its illustrious author; 
who seems resolved not to be the mere ‘ 1 Man of the Man of 
December,” or be bound to regard him as the breath of his notrils, 
in order to become, under his ill-omened auspices— 

Maitre encor incertain. d’un etat qui chancelle. 

Voltaire. 

He professes honourably to insist upon that unfettered freedom of 
choice, which, if there is to be any election at all, ought to be 
afforded equally to all persons and all parties. 

This end can, I think, only be accomplished in one of two ways. 
Let the Bonapartist invaders be withdrawn, and the partisans of 
every form of Government have immediate access to the capital; or 
let Juarez, with a Federalist force, equal its number to that of M. 
Bonaparte, be invited to march, without molestation, into the country, 
for the protection of his partisans against the tyranny of the Man of 
December’s Marshal and myrmidons. If Forey and Almonte are to 
exercise unlimited constraint over the electors, there will be as little 
freedom of choice at Mexico as there was at Paris in 1851. The 
supporters of Juarez are still in the field; the horrors ascribed to 
them by the French and English press, who always unite in bespat¬ 
tering the unsuccessful with the mud of malignity and misrepresen¬ 
tation, are probably much exaggerated, and would never have taken 
place if the Man of December had not ruthlessly infringed upon the 
peace and independence of a country, with which he had no right to 
interfere—and in which so many Frenchmen have perished, either 
from sickness or in the field— 

Les Fran^ais sont lasses de chercher desormais 

Dos climats, que pour eux lo Destin n’a point faits. 

Voltaire. 


526 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


How indignant must every right-minded and reflecting politician 
feel, when he finds the alleged cruelties of Juarez denounced by the 
author of such sanguinary and treacherous massacres as Mexico has 
never yet witnessed. 

“ The expedition against the Government of President Juarez was 
postponed until the conclusion of the rainy season. Juarez was in 
San Luis Potosi, combining his troops for the purpose of resisting 
the French.” 

“ The Juarez forces are said to consist of about 9,000 men. The 
first division, 5,000 strong, under tho command of Porfirio I)eaz; 
the second, 4,000 strong, under that of a Senor Escandon.”— Times. 

“We continue to receive the most heartrending accounts from all 
parts of the interior. The Juarez forces seem determined to leave 
nothing but ruin and devastation in their rear; the farms are laid 
waste, the villages pillaged, the ‘leva ’ en masse, which has been 
decreed by the authorities at San Luis, serves as a pretext for every 
bandit chief to seize upon the inhabitants: fathers of families, ser¬ 
vants, labourers are alike carried off, and obliged either to serve as 
soldiers, or else ransom themselves by the payment of considerable 
sums of money. To escape from this universal conscription the male 
part of the population are betaking themselves to the mountains, 
haciendas are being abandoned, and landed proprietors are flying 
from their estates, leaving them to the care of agents, who, in their 
turn, will soon be compelled to abandon them. Bum stares every 
one in the face, and it is much to be feared that all these horrors 
will be succeeded by a year of scarcity, perhaps of famine.”— II. 

‘‘According to the last advices from Guadalajara, Arteaga, the 
military Governor of the place, was conducting himself in a most 
arbitrary manner. Forced loans and contributions were the order 
of the day, shops were closing, business, there was none; and the 
prisons were filled to overflowing.”— lb. 

“ The New York JForld asserts that information has reached Now 
Orleans that the French had occupied Matamoras with 4,000 troops.” 

“A collision is expected to take place at the mouth of the Eio 
Grande between the French and Federal gunboats, on matters con¬ 
nected with cotton and supplies for the Confederates.” 

“ Cortes, the Governor of Sonora, has arrived at Washington. It 
is rumoured that his object is to establish a Mexican alliance with 
the Federal Government.” 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAFARTES ? 


527 


“ The number of victims under the rule of Juarez was 7,305, of 
whom 2,065 were assassinated while defending their liberty, their 
life, and their property.”— Scotsman. 

Not equal, even if true, to the massacres of December 1851. 

“ The Imperial denouncer of Mexican 1 barbarities ’ is himself the 
flagitious advocate of forced labour in Egypt, notwithstanding the 
detestations and disgust which that horrid system excites in the 
minds of the constituted authorities. 

“ His Excellency, the Pasha, spoke in most feeling and depre¬ 
catory terms of the misery caused by the forced labour system in the 
formation of the Cairo and Suez Railway , which caused him the deepest 
pain , and brought the conviction to his mind of its cruelty and injustice .” 

“ The Globe says that, in face of the language held in the Northern 
States against the Mexican empire, the Archduke is quite justified 
in requiring guarantees for the integrity and independence of the 
new empire, and has no doubt the Great Powers will give the most 
friendly consideration to the subject, but it is one which requires the 
most careful consideration.” 

“ How far England can join with France in guarantees for the 
stability of a Mexican monarchy is yet to be ascertained. France is, 
of course, committed on the whole question; but England is in a 
very different position, having been, since her withdrawal from the 
intervention in Mexico, so soon as it assumed an aspect which she 
could not sanction, perfectly free to take any course that seems most 
consistent with the welfare of Mexico, and with a due regard to the 
preservation of that independent attitude towards other states, 
European and American, interested in the position of Mexico, which 
it is at once her interest and her duty to maintain.”— Scotsman. 

It remains to be seen, whether the Man of December may not be 
offended by this display of dignified hesitation—■ 

J’ai sujet do me plaiudre, 

Que Pon oppose encore a mes empressemens 
L’offensantc lenteur de ces retardemens. 

Voltaire. 

Exasperated as the Confederates are against England, and much 
as they desire to obtain recognition and countenance in France, they 
have still enough of discernment and impartiality to perceive and 


528 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES 


acknowledge the selfishness and simulation by which all the Man of 
December’s manoeuvres and machinations in Mexico are so plainly 
and palpably characterised. 

“ The appeal of the Confederates is to France alone, as the pro¬ 
tector of the Mexican monarchy and the bold challenger of Federal 
supremacy on the Continent .”— Times. 

“ The Confederate Government, angry at the disappointment of its 
hopes, has acted under the influence of passion, and determined to 
treat Lord Bussell with the disdain which they think he has exhibited 
towards their emissary — lb. 

“ The selection of an Austrian Prince for the Sovereign of the 
country looks like an ostentatious disclaimer by the Emperor of the French 
of territorial cupidity. He does not contemplate the establishment 
of a French colony; but the erection of a dependent sovereignty, sup¬ 
ported by his arms, and obedient to his inspirations, may insure him all 
the solid advantages of the same without the odium of the name of con¬ 
quest.”—Richmond Paper. 

“ -The bold measures of the French Emperor undoubtedly proclaim 
his deliberate judgment as to the result of our war of independence, 
and almost necessarily involve a guaranty of protection in case of 
need. Had he thought, that it was probable the United States’ 
Government would be re-established in its former power, he would 
never have embarked in an enterprise which would inevitably cause a collision 
with that Power, and now that he has so signally accomplished his 
end, he cannot permit his work to be undone, and his schemes 
subverted by the establishment of an immense malevolent military 
Power by the side of his newly-created monarchy.”— lb. 

M. Bonaparte’s hatred of the Federalists, on account of the friendly 
reception given to the illustrious Princes of the House of Bourbon, 
induces him to set at naught every consideration of prudence and 
propriety, and he seems anxious rather to accelerate than to avoid a 
war, in which his hostility to the republican institutions is likely, ere 
long, to involve him. 

“ The Bourbons have given the tie a personal and family character, 
by sending two of the young chiefs of their House to fight under the 
Federal standard. The Emperor may not be sorry to cut away the 
connection of France with a country thus linked to his predecessors. 
He entered on a policy unfriendly to the Federal States, and was 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 529 

strongly condemned by the educated classes in France when ho sent 
his troops to Mexico .’’—Saturday Review. 

The traditional connection of France with the United States is 
bound up with the name and fortunes of a family which the Emperor 
desires, above all things, to consign to oblivion.”— Ib. 

“ For some days considerable astonishment has been evinced that 
the Consul-General of tlio United States at Frankfort should have 
hoisted the Mexican flag side by side with the American flag. This 
innovation may have been an excess of personal zeal on the part of 
the Consul-General, nevertheless it has given rise to various surmises. 
AY e are now informed that already, some months since, M. Juarez, 
the President of the Mexican Republic, had written to the Cabinet 
of W asliington, and asked if it would have any objection to Mexico 
being represented abroad by the agents of the United States in case 
the legal authority should be temporarily upset in Mexico. The 
Washington Cabinet sent an immediate reply to the request of 
Mexico. In a despatch which bears the date of last March, Mr. 
Seward informed the agents of the United States that they would, 
doubtless have to represent the Mexican Republic in foreign countries if 
Mexico should fall into the hands of foreigners. It is, moreover, 
very explicitly stated in that despatch that, under no circumstances, 
would the United States tolerate the introduction into Mexico of any 
other form of government than the republican.”— Times. 

The Americans have as good a right to reinstate Juarez as the 
Man of December could claim for the purpose of pulling him down. 
It has never, I think, been alleged against the Mexican ruler that 
he paved the way to supremacy by perfidy, perjury, and bloodshed ; 
that his ambition is higher than heaven, and his cunning deeper than 
hell; that the length of his vindictiveness is longer than the earth; 
and the breadth of his selfishness broader than the sea. If, however, 
the wishes of the Mexican people can be fairly and freely ascer¬ 
tained, without any attempt on the part of the Imperial emissaries to 
terrify or tamper with the electors, and that their choice should fall 
upon a Prince who has displayed so much prudence and modera¬ 
tion, a government founded on such a basis would, probably, meet 
with general acquiescence and approval. That the illustrious candi¬ 
date should have been nominated by the man who attained pre¬ 
eminence in France by the basest and most barefaced criminality, 
would, indeed, be a great drawback upon the prestige of liis elevation. 

L L 


530 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


But I would even then apply to his Imperial Highness what 
Voltaire said to an author whose work had been sanctioned by the 
Sorbonne (a tribunal which he regarded as a very questionable 
dispenser of fame), “Courage, mon ami, il est bon, malgre leur 
suffrage.” 

There are, however, it must be admitted, not a few considerations, 
which tend to excite unpleasant suspicions as to the Archduke’s 
straightforwardness and sincerity. “Here” says he himself, “ is a 
map of Mexico, upon which are exactly marked the points which 
have adhered to the vote of the Notables. You see that they only 
comprise a fourth part of Mexico. Although I am convinced that 
the French army will very soon deliver the other provinces from the 
pressure put upon them , and that then, as you assure me, an immense 
majority will sanction the vote of the 12th of July, I owe it to my¬ 
self, as to the nation to which I shall henceforth devote my life, not 
to assume the reins of government so long as civil tear shall desolate 
Mexico. Inform me that the majority has really adhered to my 
election, and in less than 24 hours I shall be ready to depart.” 

There is much here said as to the “ pressure ” put upon the other 
provinces, not yet subdued by Forey’s bayonets; but not the slightest 
allusion to the “pressure” to which the districts are subjected, where 
French troops predominate. Unless fair play be secured to all 
parties, the Archduke goes to Mexico as a mere tool, and vassal of 
that Man of December, and if he is really in earnest, he ought to 
insist upon the immense majority declaring itself, without any foreign 
pressure from without. 

“M. Ghitierry de Estrada had already informed his Imperial 
Highness that the Mexican people were ‘ unanimous. ’ The Mexi¬ 
cans will now be called upon to vote, and the French army is then to see 
that the votes shall he voluntary as well as unanimous. — Times.” 

“It would be absurd to doubt that those votes will be freely and 
voluntarily given— as freely as universal suffrage is practised in France; 
but it is possible the Archduke, who is so deeply interested in the 
matter, may have some slight misgivings on that head. He may 
think that the suffrages, which are given in the presence , if not under 
the direct influence of foreign bayonets, even when those who wield 
them come as liberators, and in all probability with a press reduced 
to silence, are open to suspicion.”— lb. 

“The language of his reply to the Mexican deputation suggests, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BON APATITES ? 


531 


by internal evidence, suspicions of a foreign origin. Gratitude is 
one of the most graceful virtues, and Mexico, whatever may be its 
value, is an absolute gift to its future Sovereign. Nevertheless, it is 
startling to find that a Prince of the House of Hapsburg almost 

OPENLY PROFESSES HIS VASSALAGE TO THE EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. 
The crown is accepted according to the forms prescribed by the most 
recent and rigid French precedents.”— Saturday Review . 

“The Moniteur does not explain how 200 or 300 men, unarmed, 
and without resources of any kind, continue to keep under the 
domination of their leader a territory five or six times larger than 
that which is occupied by a French army numbering 30,000 men. 
It is indeed difficult, to conceive how a handful of men can thus master a 
whole people—a people , too, execrating the tyranny of Juarez and yloiving 
with enthusiasm for their liberators. If a few hundred brigands, with 
hardly a musket in their possession, and reduced to the last 
extremity, have beaten the Mexicans so completely out of all life 
and spirit, it will, I fear, go hard with the new Emperor when left 
alone, and without having the French army to fall back upon. Wo 
are also told, that while Juarez, with his starving and half naked 
outlaws, performs this miracle, the ‘ Triumvirate ’ are obliged to inflict 
fines on some of the towns in order to briny them to a proper sense of their 
situation, and to encourage the others. Tlalpam (San Augustin), a 
town of 4,000 souls, for instance, was called upon to pay 6,000 
piastres, and being either unable or unwilling to do so has been 
obliged to give hostages; and, if this strong measure be not sufficient, 
the town itself, which is about half a dozen leagues from the capital, 
the headquarters of the French, will be ‘ re-appropriated.' ” 

“ The Madrid paper in question, the Epoca, states, moreover, that 
the ‘ Triumvirate ’ demanded from the capitalists of Mexico a loan 
of a million piastres, payable in monthly instalments of 200,000 
piastres, to be reimbursed in six months after each payment. The 
capitalists begged to be informed whether this was meant as a forced loan 
or a voluntary one. ‘Voluntary, of course,’ answered the ‘Triumvi¬ 
rate ’ whereupon the capitalists buttoned up their pockets and went 
home. They were again called upon, and there is reason to fear, 
adds the Epoca, that the Triumvirs will feel obliged to have recourse to 
the practice of their predecessors, and male a forced loan, though the 
French commander had pledged himself to prohibit this mode of replenish¬ 
ing the treasury — Times. 


l l 2 


532 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES ? 


“The spontaneous expression of tlie wishes of the nation is re¬ 
quired, not to represent Mexican opinion, but to sanction the process 
which gave a master to Trance, and a new owner to Savoy and Nice. 

“ The English Government, will of course, abstain, as in the cases 
of Central Italy and Naples, from approving, directly or indirectly, 
the manner in which the Archduke Maximilian, under French 
dictation, proposes to assume the Mexican Crown. Undisputed 
possession will be a better proof of his right than any manipulation 
of the ballot .”—Saturday Review. 

The dilemma, put by an enlightened French writer seems alto¬ 
gether unanswerable. 

“ Of two things one—either the election of the Archduke is the 
serious expression of the wishes of the Mexican people, and our task 
is accomplished, and all we have to do is to leave the rest to them ; 
or we have counted too much on the intentions of that people and 
disposed of them without their consent, and in this case the arms of 
France should not be employed in forcing upon them a dynasty 
which has no root in the national soil. If the Archduke Maximilian 
can ascend alone the throne of Mexico he is in reality the legilimate 
Emperor, and he has no need of us. If he has need of us, it is we 
who help him to ascend the throne, and he is no longer anything 
but the protege of France.” 

“M. de Belleyme does not approve France occupying Mexico to 
support the new Emperor :— 

“ ‘ For France to do so until tho Mexican monarchy shall be con¬ 
solidated would be to contract an indefinite engagement, to enter 
upon an impossible undertaking; in other words, to commit an act 
of political imprudence.’ ” 

“As to the payment of the expenses of an army of occupation, he 
says that the French army is not an army of mercenaries, and that 
you cannot expect 15,000 men to sacrifice seven years of their lives 
to go 2,000 leagues’ distance to support a foreign Government.” 

It seems, therefore, but too probable that tlie new Emperor will 
stoop to accept the proffered crown after the farce of a compulsory 
election has been carried through, in which Forey will be the re¬ 
turning officer, and the polling places surrounded by his Zouaves 
and his sycophants; and the Austrian nominee will proclaim his 
patron and protector to be— 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE3 ? 


533 


. . . . Dieu, qui, parmi ces pervers 

Descend pour adoucir los moeurs de l’Univers. 

Yoltaikb. 

His total loss of character will, after all, be dearly purchased 
by his showy, rather than solid, and perhaps only ephemeral gain. 

“No protocols that can be signed in Paris or Vienna will give 
him more than a couple of millions of ignorant Spaniards, and about 
twice that number of red Indians and half-castes for subjects. He 
must always be 5,000 miles from Europe, and separated from his 
allies not only by the ocean, but by unhealthy lowlands, which are 
likely to prevent the sending of contingents.”— Liberal Paper. 

11 Looking to the future , the Archduke may see the angry [Republic of 
the United States ready to find some occasion of quarrel with the 
Government which is bringing Mexico under a firm and orderly con¬ 
trol, and preventing its outlying provinces from falling away after 
the manner of Texas. Even now it is said that the emissaries 
of the defeated President are soliciting help at Washington, and 
if ever the I'chral Government should feel itself strong enough to attach 
the new -Monarchy , it would no doubt be tinder the pretext that the election 
of Maximilian was no election, that a clique made him Emperor 
udder the dictation of a Prencii commandant, and that the legiti¬ 
mate authority rested with the fugitive Government of Juarez. To 
obviate this assertion, the Archduke now demands that a free 
election by universal suffrage shall confer and consecrate his 
authority. The entire population, white and Indian, will, it ap¬ 
pears, vote and proclaim, on principles which are unquestioned in 
the New World, that his Government is no usurpation.”— Times. 

He may soon find occasion to exclaim— 

Le sceptre, que je tiens, pese a ma main tremblante, 

Je ne puis sans secours en soutenir le poicls. 

Quinault. 

“M. Debrauz does not explain the condition demanded by the 
Archduke, viz., ‘ the indispensable guarantees which shall protect 
the Mexican Empire from the dangers which would menace its inte¬ 
grity and its independence.’ ”— Times. 

Ho has no military or monetary aid to expect from England. 


534 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


u We cannot think that they are guilty of the error of expecting 
that we shall go hand in hand with France, and take an equal share 
with her in supporting the Mexican throne.— Times. 

A notable expedient has, however, been suggested by the eager 
and enthusiastic deputies, through which the pacification of Mexico 
may be effected without expense, bloodshed, coercion, or intrigue. 
The Empress elect is invited to act on the “ veni, vidi , vici ’’ prin¬ 
ciple, and all the staunchest and sternest Juarists will crouch in 
ecstatic admiration at her feet. Let her only deign to appear, and 
the 100,000 men for whom she is declared to be equivalent, may be 
recalled with perfect impunity. 

Te Deo, tc fugimet venti, te umbilo coeli, 

Adventumque tuum. 

. . . percussse corcla tua vi, 

Omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorcm, , 

Effice ut interea fera moenora militari 
Per maria ac terras ornncs sopita quicscant 
Nam tu sola potes tranquilla pace juvare 
Mortales. 

Lucretius. 


“ 1 The very sight of this incomparable Princess would be worth to 
her august husband an army of 40,000 men; and there wets not 
a single partisan of Juarez who, at the aspect of the Archduchess Charlotte, 
would not become an enthusiastic Imperialist .’ The Emperor Napoleon 
will be very glad to hear this, though he may regret he did not know it 
before, for it would have saved him the thousands who have perished by 
disease or by the hands of the enemy. The age of chivalry has not yet 
passed away. It has abandoned Europe, but only to take refuge in 
Mexico.” 

A celebrated paragon of female attractions seems to have exercised, 
in ancient times, a similar power over the hearts both of young and 
old; but the wise and prudent could not help deprecating and 
dreading the protracted calamities which her continuance amongst 
them could not fail to entail upon their country— 

Trojans and Grecians wage, with fair excus 
Long war for so much beauty. Oh, how like 
In feature to the goddesses above! 

Pernicious loveliness ! Ah, hence ! away ! 

Resistless as thou art, and all divine, 

Nor leave a curse to us, and to our sons. 

Cowper’s “ Iliad,” Book III, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BOXAPARTES ? 


Many wary and patriotic Mexicans may anticipate, with, dark and 
dismal forebodings, the advent of a foreign Princess, however fair 
and fascinating, if, through her instrumentality, the Man of De¬ 
cember’s pernicious influence should be established throughout the 
length and breadth of the land, until civil discord is rekindled by a 
general consciousness of degradation.* American auxiliaries may 
then cross the frontiers to emancipate the population from tyranny 
and thraldom. 

Whenever the Decembrists embark in projects of conquest and 
confiscations, Medusa would be a more suitable patroness than 
Yenus of their rapacious and ruinous career— 

Je porte l’epouvante ct la mort en tous lieux— 

Tout ce change en rocher a mon aspect horrible— 

Lcs traits, quo Jupiter lance du haut dcs cicux, 

N’ont rien de si terrible 
Qu’un regard dc mes yonx. 

Quin ault. 

When g loan was lately announced at Mexico by the French 
authorities, an eminent capitalist, who had at first enrolled his name 
amongst those of the subscribers, attempted to withdraw it, on 
learning that the arrangement, which he had supposed to be com¬ 
pulsory, was, of course, quite free and optional. “ Les volontes 
sont libres ” (said Forey). “Je suis liomme a ne contraindre per- 
sonne ” (Moliere). He was immediately sent for by the Decemberist 
Marshal, and the following dialogue is reported to have taken place 
between him and one of the Marshal’s aides-de-camp :— 

“Aide-de-camp (parlant d'un ton doucereuxj .— Monsieur, je suis 
votre serviteur tres humble. 

“ Banquier Mexicain . —Monsieur, je suis le votre do tout mon 
coeur. 

“ A. —M. le Marechal m’a dit, Monsieur, que vous vous etiez venu 
degager de la parole que vous aviez donne. 

* Je viens apres trois ans, d’assembler des amis, 

Dans leur commune haine avec nous affermis— 

Ils sont dans nos forets; et leur foule heroiquo 
Yient perir sous ccs murs, ou yenger l’Amerique. 

Yoltaire. 


536 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

“ B. If. —Oui, Monsieur. C’est avec regret—mais— 

“ A. —Oh! Monsieur, il n’y a pas cle mal a cela— 

<{ B. If. —J’cn suis faclie, je vous assure ; et je souhaiterais— 
u A .—Cela n’estrien, vous dis-je —(ilpresente an B.M. deux eples). 
Monsieur, prenez la peine de choisir de ces deux epees, laquelle vous 
voulez. 

“ B. If .—De ces deux epees ? 

“A. —Oui, s’il vous plait. 
u IL If .—A quoi bon ? 

“ A. —Monsieur, comme vous refusez de prefer votre argent apres 
la parole donnee, je crois, que vous ne trouverez pas mauvais le petit 
compliment que je viens vous faire— 

11 B. If. —Comment ? 

“ A. —D’autres gens feraient plus de bruit, et s’importer aient 
contre vous—mais nous sommes personnes a traiter les clioses dans 
la douceur—et je viens vous dire civilement, qu’il faut, si vous lo 
trouvez bon, que nous vous coupions la gorge ensemble. 

“ IL If .—Yoila un compliment fort mal tourne. 

“A. —Allons, Monsieur, clioisissez, je vous prie— 

“ B. If .—Je suis votre valet; je n’ai point de gorge a couper. 

(a part ) La vilaine facon de purler que voila! 

“ A. —Monsieur, il faut quo cela soit, s’il vous plait— 
u B. IL —He! Monsieur, regainez ce compliment, je vous 
prie— 

“A .—Depechons vite, Monsieur—jai une petite affaire, qui 
m’ attend. 

11 B. If .—Je ne veux point de cela, vous dis-je. 
u A. —Vous ne voulez pas vous battre? 
u B. If. —Nenni, ma foi— 

“ A .—Tout de bon ? 

“ B. If .—Tout de bon— 

“A, (apres lui avoir dome des coups de Idton ).—Aij moins, Mon¬ 
sieur, vous n’avez pas rien de vous plaindre—vous voyez que 
je fais les clioses dans l’ordre. Vous vous manquez de parole 
—je vous me battre contre vous—vous refusez de vous battre, 
je vous donne des coups de baton; tout cela est dans les formes 
—et vous etes trop honnete homme, pour ne pas approuver mon 
procede. 

“ B. If. (d part ).—Quel diable d’homme est ceci ? 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


537 


u A. (luipresente encore les deux epees). Allons, Monsieur, faites les 
clioses galamment, et sans vous faire tirer l’oreille. 

iC It. M .—Encore ? 

(< A. —Monsieur, je ne contrains personne—mais il faut quo vous 
vous battiez, ou que vous pretiez votre argent. 

“ A. M. —Monsieur, je no puis faire ni Pun ni l’autre, je vous 
assure— 

“ A .—Assurement ? 

“A. M. —Assurement— 

“ A .—Avec votre permission clone (il lui dome encore des coups de 
baton.) 

“A. J/.—All! ah! all! 

“A. —Monsieur, j’ai tons les regrets du mond d’etre oblige cl’en 
user avec vous—mais je ne cessarai point, s’il vous plait, que vous 
n’ayez promis cle vous battre, ou clo payer votre argent (il leve le 
baton). 

“ A. M .—He bien! je payerai, je payerai— 

11 A. —All! Monsieur, je suis ravi que vous mettiez a la raison, 
et que les clioses se passant doucement, car enfin, vous etes l’homme 
du monde que j’estime le plus, je vous jure—et j’aurais ete au cleses- 
poir, que vous m’eussiez contraint a vous maltraiter—jo vais appeler 
M. le Marechal, pour lui dire, que tout est d’accord. (Foret/ entre.) 
M. le Marechal, voila Monsieur qui est tout a fait raisonnable. 11 
a voulu faire les choses de bonne grace, et il va vous apporter son 
argent. 

“ Forey. —Monsieur, voila ma main—vous n’avez qu’a donner la 
votre-—et a entonner le refrain patriotiquo de votre gratitude, et de 
galanterie. 

(i A. M .— Yive l’Empereur ! Vive l’Imperatrice ! Vive le Prince 
Imperial !—(VFmprunt volontaire .)” 

Les captif et les captives se rejouissent de la libertc que leur est 
rendue— 

Chieur de Marciiands et de Banquiers Mexicaixs, Ensemble. 

Sortons d’ csclavage— 

Profitons de l’avantage 

Quo son bras a remporte. 

Notre libertc 

Est le prix do son courage. 

Sortons d’esclayage. 


538 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES 


UN BANQUIER. 

Au genereux Forey je dois ma delivrance; 
D’un sort afFreux sa valeur m’a sauvd : 

II n’a voulu de ma reconnaissance 
Que tout 1* argent quo j’avois reservo. 

Quixauet. 


ClICEUIt BE MeXICAINS DE ToUTES EES CLASSES. 

Yotre grand Empereur 
Nous fo umit le bonheur— 

Sur la Seine et lc Tibre 
Par ses soins tout est libre— 

Et pour priser nos fers 
Yous traversiez les mers. 

Yolontaires esclaves 
De yos galans Zouaves, 

Nos mines, nos bijoux, 

Tous destines pour yous, 

Seront sur yotre Bourse 
TJne utile ressource— 

Si l’Archeduc enfin 
Fuit son brillant destin, 

Ayec sa femnie armee 
Qui yaut seule une armee. 

L’auguste Patterson 
Serait un plus cher don— 

Nous octroyant la cbarte, 

Comme un vrai Bonaparte, 

Logeant supcrbement 
Et magnifiquement, 

Faisant chore royale 
A la Sardanapale, 

Tous nos droits les plus saints 
Fleurisont dans ses mains— 

La police et la prcsse 
L’occuperont sans cesse 
Nos editeurs liardis 
Seront tous a vert is— 

A la mode Franfaise 
Nous serous a notre aise— 

Et nos liberateurs 
Voleront tous nos cceurs. 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


5 39 


We are assured by the official organs of Paris, that the conquest 
or liberation of the Mexicans is a fait accompli. All Europe is called 
upon to believe, that peace is within their walls, and prosperity 
within their palaces. The u dicebatus contra ” principle deserves, 
however, to be called into play. Forey appears to have exclaimed, 
like Saul, “ Blessed be thou of the Lord (or, perhaps, Vive 
VEmpereur would be more in keeping), I have performed the 
commandment, and carried everything’ before me.” But we find 
Samuel taking a rule to show cause against this magniloquent 
asseveration—“ What meanetli then this bleating of the sheep in 
mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen, which I hear?” (1 Sam. xv. 
14.) And the archducal candidate may, perhaps, be led to ask 
“What mean these military executions, these suspensions of law 
and liberty, these moanings and nmrmurings, which I hear ?” 

“The renovation is complete; peace reigns throughout the land ; 
prosperity comes exactly as Juarez*" goes; and it certainly must be 
admitted that the new government has done wonders to lie able to 
attend to such details as the organization of schools of art. 

“The first remark people make who read these accounts is that 
the mission of France is now complete , and that all that the French 
General has to do is to hand over at once the heys of Mexico to the repre¬ 
sentatives of the Archduhe. There can be no fear, they say, of his 
throne not being sufficiently consolidated, because the detested press 
system, by which Juarez got his levies, has been abolished by the 
Regency, and they conclude, that an Empire , which , even in its 
infancy , has the cordial and unanimous adhesion of the people is beyond 


* The antipathy of the Deccmberists towards Juarez is caused by the contrast 
exhibited between one President, who “maintains the Republic,” which had been 
confided to his care, and another who overthrew the institutions which ho had 
sworn to defend. Had the Mexicans not been crushed by foreign despotism, they 
yould have gradually consolidated a powerful and well ordered republic—and 
perhaps have ultimately realized a French poet’s prophetic dream— 

Je vois, je vois de loin l’Anierique etonnec, 

Sortir du fond des eaux, de villcs condonnee; 

Les foists du Mexique errantes sur nos mers; 

Les mers couvrir nos bords de nations armees; 

Nos campagnes de morts semees; 

L’Europc entierc dans les fers: 


GlLJiEHT. 


540 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


the reach of contingencies. The French army did not go to Mexico as 
enemies; on the contrary, the Mexicans , as has been stated repeatedly 
in official documents, were calling for them ivith might and main to 
save them from men who, without scruple and without conscience, were 
pillaging and crushing them. That band of pillagers is now dispersed; 
they are driven from the country more by the hatred of the country than 
by the French arms; and the nation, delighted at last to breathe 
freely, rallies to a man round the throne raised by General Forey. 
In such circumstances it is not strange that people should ask why 

THEY HEAR NOTHING YET ABOUT TnE RETURN OF THE FRENCH ARMY, 

however painful the separation might be between the liberated and 
the liberators. True, something now and then oozes out which 
makes one suspect that the picture given in the Moniteur is too 
highly coloured. The city of Mexico has its Gazette Officielle , and 
in the last number received here may be found the following 
proclamation:— 

“ ‘ Pursuant to the orders of the Marshal commanding-in-chief the 
expeditionary corps, measures have been adopted to prevent fresh 
attempts against the French soldiers , and against the allies of the inter¬ 
vention. The Commandant Cousin, who is invested with full powers 
in the district of Tlalpam, has issued the following order :— 

“ ‘The superior military commandant, Political Chief of Tlalpam, 
informs the inhabitants and proprietors of that city that— 

“‘Art. 1.— The judicial powers, and those of the civil authority, are 
temporarily suspended until f urther orders. 

“ ‘ Art. 2.—The Superior Commandant of Tlalpam is invested with 
all powers in the district. 

“ ‘ Art. 3.—As chastisement for the assassination of the Zouave 
Muller, a line of 6,000 piastres is imposed on the city of Tlalpam, 
the whole of which must be paid in within four days from the date of the 
present decree. 

“ ‘Art. 4.—The individuals of that city, who have been arrested 
and sent to the capital, shall answer for the lives of the French soldiers, 
and for those of the honourable citizens who have given their adhe¬ 
sion to the new Government. For every honourable citizen or soldier 
assassinated at Tlalpam one of the above-mentioned prisoners shall be 
executed by way of reprisal. (!!!) 

“ ‘ Art, 5. —All the inhabitants of Tlalpam shall obey strictly 
the orders given by the Superior Commandant. In case of resist- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


541 


ance, the Marshal mil he under the necessity of adopting measures of 
rigour .’ ” 

u The Paris semi-official paper says, that the Mexicans are greatly 
struck by this order. I dare say they are. The Archduke Maxi¬ 
milian may also be struck with it, and reflect, that a country can 

HARDLY BE CONSIDERED OBEDIENT AND ENTHUSIASTIC WHERE MEASURES 
SO RIGOROUS ARE OBLIGED TO BE ADOPTED TO PROTECT TIIE LIVES OF 

its liberators. The Mexicans assuredly have a strange way of 
showing their enthusiasm.”— limes. 

“Whether the Archduke has misgivings about the state of affairs 
or not, it is rumoured that his Imperial Highness hesitates accepting 
the crown offered him by the assembly of ‘ Notables,’ chosen by the 
French Minister at Mexico. The ratification of that offer by means of 
universal suffrage the French General will of course take care to have pro- 
properly executed; so that on this score there will be no difficult}". 
The other point, that of the guarantees, deemed indispensable by 
the Archduke, is not so certain. To guarantee the integrity of an 
Empire , and a loan at the same time , are obligations which , it is to be 
feared , the French Chambers will not very willingly assume. Hitherto 
the Mexican war has not been viewed favourably by any one, and a 
proposal to guarantee a loan, or to guarantee the throne against 
Yankee agression would not, I think, excite much enthusiasm. If 
the Archduke does not accept, the Emperor will probably look out for 
another candidate; but, in the meantime, the army must remain till the 
edifice of Mexican regeneration is crowned by the election of a Sove¬ 
reign. Many people are of opinion, that the best thing the Emperor 
could do is to annex Mexico at once to the crown of France.”— lb. 

“I will bet 2,000 dollars that war is declared against France 
before the 1st day of January; and I will wager that California be¬ 
fore that time will be ready to place 100,000 soldiers, with rifles and 
bowie knives, in the very heart of Mexico, without asking the aid of 
one of her sister states; and I will wager that force will whip 200,000 
Frenchmen, if Louis Napoleon can get up that quantity of men to 
go into Mexico to assist in inaugurating the Austrian Me: tezuma.” 
— Manhattan. 

“ The Mexican business is a mistake, unless France is prepared to go 
much deeper into the venture than she has gone already. But it is equally 
difficult for the Emperor to justify the past, and to explain what he 
is prepared to do for the future in Mexico.” 


542 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


It seems as if Spain, as well as France, had been inveigled into a 
futile and fantastic expedition, which, after having been unjust 
in its origin, may end in discomfiture and disaster. The result in 
both cases is as problematical and precarious as the cost is immense 
and inevitable. 

“ There is reason to suspect that, after all, the desire for annexa¬ 
tion to the mother country was not so deep or so general as was 
supposed, and that the Spanish Government teas the dupe of a handful 
of malcontents and adventurers .”— Times. 

The transports of joy with which they received the tidings that 
Spain did not refuse to open her arms to her prodigal children, so 
long estranged from her, is only equalled by the enthusiasm of the Mexi¬ 
can people on learning that they are to have a descendant of Charles V. for 
their Emperor.”—Evening Herald. 

“It is clear from the costly expedition the Madrid Government is 
sending out that the enthusiasm of the Dominicans for the mother country 
must have cooled down a good deal.” — Times. 

Meanwhile, wo are furnished, per contra , with another instance 
that South America must regard European oneness, as an unneessary 
curse and a calamity.” 

“ The accounts from Buenos Ayres to-day, via Bordeaux, reach to 
the 11th of September, and state the country to be in a position of 
perfect quietude , and with symptoms of steady progress in numerous 
branches of enterprise .” 


XI .—Position and Prospects of France cmd of Europe. 

To enlightened and high-minded Frenchmen, there is, perhaps, 
no more galling and grievous aggravation of their resentments and 
regrets than to be coolly told by foreign politicians and public 
writers, that the present humiliating and harassing condition of 
their country is inevitable and irremediable, and that France must 
desire as a blessing what Britain would deprecate as a bane. 

“ There are excuses for a despotism in France , because France wants to 
be defended from herself and France has a foreign policy which 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


543 


requires ‘ a strong Government ’ to carry out. She has desperate 
anarchical elements in her own internal composition which require 
to be kept down by a strong hand, and she aims at military glory in 
her relations with the world without.”— Times. 

“A nobleman was once visited, inconsequence of untoward circum¬ 
stances, by a temporary paroxysm of insanity. One of the strongest 
proofs, and most painful results, of his malady was, that he placed 
himself under the care of a daring and desperate quack, who, as 
soon as he had got the unhappy victim into his power, applied the 
gag and the strait-waistcoat, excluded all his most attached friends 
from his society, pronounced him to be an incurable lunatic, 
deprived him altogether of his liberty, and assumed the uncontrolled 
management of his concerns. The patient gradually came to him¬ 
self, and was most anxious (though in vain) to be rescued from this 
ignominious and intolerable thraldom. But nothing enhanced his 
sufferings so much as the callous and cold-blooded cruelty of his 
self-sufficient and sneering neighbours, who ‘ laughed at his 
calamity, mocked when his fear came as a desolation,’ declared with 
a significant shake of the head, fcenum habct in cornu , he is quite 
unfit to superintend his own affairs; his restoration to freedom 
would be a calamity to himself, and a catastrophe to the world; he 
ought to thank his stars (and so should we) that he has fallen into 
such resolute and respectable hands.” 

There are, however, some symptoms, which tend to encourage the 
belief, that, although the horizon of France is enveloped in the dreary 
darkness of despotism, some rays of light are beginning to emerge, 
in spite of the thickness of the clouds, “until the daybreak, and the 
shadows flee away” (Song of Solomon, ii. 17). A longing to got 
rid of an intolerant and intolerable incubus is beginning to pervade 
all classes. The feelings of the nobles, statesmen, and philosophers, 
who aspire after freedom and abominate oppression, are congenial 
with those which animated the proud and patriotic Castilians, when 
an obscure and odious upstart contrived (though with at the 
monarchical title) to usurp an ill-gotten and worse administered 
pre-eminence; and if their wishes should ever be crowned with 
success, the concluding remark will be regarded as strikingly 
apposite:— 

“ Maxima procerum pars in perniciem ejus conspiravit, quern cum 


544 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


novis hominibus, atque ejus beneficio obligatis, superb^ ot avare 
dominari dolebant. Nulla militari laude, nullis virtutibus, una in¬ 
genii dexteritate, et assimulatis ad tempus officiis ad euin gratice et 
potentice gradum evectum qnerebantur scilicet, solumque regnare ; 
recentem ejus felicitateni segris ocubs aspicientes, et fortuiue modum 
in liomine aliocpii liumili et obscuro requirentes maxime. Ipse 
ferox, venturique securus, cseteros omnes prse se yiles existimare, 
nimiumque potential prsesenti tidere.”— Mariana , xx. 15. 

“ Profunda calliditas, atque siniulatio; audacia, superbia, ambitio, 

ex quibus, atque ex fraude, compositus videbatur.TIcoc 

a primis annis suscepta, confirmavit setas, atque auxit. Accessit 

contemptus hominum, commune potentium malum.iEtatis 

flexu via pervicacior fuit. Quasi fera in cavea petita jaculis, deinde 
emissa, inimicorum odio exacerbatus, impotens que successu, quas 
non strages dedit, vindictce studio ardens! * His moribus non cor- 

RUISSE MIRUM EST, SED TAMDIU PERSTITISSE PUDENDUM.”- lb. Xxii. 6. 


N’ allcguez point ccs noeuds quo le crime a rompus, 

Cos Dieux qu’il outragea, ces droits qu’il a perdus— 

Morny, nous ayons fait, en lui rendant hommage, 

Serment d’ obeissancc, et non point d’esclavage. 

*- * * * * 

II nous rend nos sermens, lorsqu’il trahit le sicn. 

Yoltaiiie. 

Even many of liis sordid and suborned adherents are believed 
to be wearied of their anomalous and unbecoming position, and of 
belonging to a court or a cabinet 

Ou 1’hypocrite en paix sourit an delateur. 

Florian. 

and where not a few combine 


TJn indigne 6loge a la bouche, 

Et la Mine au fond des cceurs. 

Florian. 


A similar consciousness of national degradation seems so be gain¬ 
ing ground amongst the workmen :— 

“The inhabitants of Paris have been so long accustomed to 


* By the Decemberist’s murders and deportations. 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


545 


military sway, that the soldiers are always well received, and con¬ 
sidered rather as a security for the tranquillity of the city, and as an 
ornament to public edifices wherever they patrol. Such , however , is 
not the case m the suburbs, where the workpeople are restless, turbu¬ 
lent, dissatisfied, and look upon the soldier with an evil eye as the in¬ 
strument of Government. No less than eighteen workmen were 
brought before the Tribunal Correctional, on Friday last, for attacks 
made on two several occasions upon soldiers. The first time, an 
officer, returning to his barracks at St. Denis (at which place there 
seems a peculiar animosity to the military), was assaulted by four 
men. In the second affair, fourteen men attacked four of the band 
of musicians belonging to the Imperial Guard.” 

Sons un sceptre de fer tout cc peuplc abattu 
A force dc malhcurs a repris sa vertu— 

Lui meme il nous reniet daus nos droit legitimes— 

Le bien public est ne de 1’ exces de ses crimes. 

Voltaire. 

The French soldiers constitute an army— 

Dont le gout pour la gloirc est lc seul gout durable, 

Et qui vole en aveugle ou l’honneur (? ?) le conduit. 

Florian. 

But they will not, I think, long continue to be the accomplices 
or the agents of unprincipled and unscrupulous ambition for per¬ 
petuating ignominious despotism in their own country, and extending 
its noxious and nullifying influence over foreign lands— 

II affccte un repos dont il ne pout jouir. 

Voltaire. 

Esperant echapper aux rcmords comme aux lois. 

Florian. 

The Man of December proves, that he is aware how widely the 
feelings of indignation and impatience are abounding throughout 
Frauce, by the stringent precautions so relentlessly and rigorously 
enforced to prevent them from being developed and declared—■ 

0 des vertus derniere amie, 

Toi qu’on voudrait en vain evitcr ou tromper, 

Conscience terrible, on ne peut t’echapper. 

Florian. 


M M 


546 


OUGHT FEANCE TO WOBSHIP THE BONAPAETES ? 


The restoration of universal suffrage, to which he is mainly 
indebted for the success of his usurpation, was one of the basest 
and most barefaced outrages ever perpetrated against the common 
sense and credulity of mankind. He has ever since been quite 
prepared to massacre or mangle the class, whose suffrages he 
acquired by intimidation, intrigue, or corruption, if they dared to 
attempt a reversal of the fatal decree, which they were cajoled or 
coerced to sanction, but which was not, on their part, intended 
(although, alas! calculated) to invest him with authority to abrogate 
their laws and annihilate their liberties. 

“In spite of all appearances to the contrary, the Parisians are 
profoundly discontented with the political condition of their country.” 

^—Saturday Review . 

“Centralisation in principle, and gross official tyranny in prac¬ 
tice, can scarcely be too vehemently exposed and denounced in 
Prance.”— lb. 

‘ ‘ Public utility is the negation of individual rights ; such, at least, 
is the manner of reasoning and acting in all civilised countries.”— 
French Novel. 

“ ‘ Wretched pamphleteer,’ I exclaimed, ‘ if thouhadst the honour 
of living amongst the most amiable and enlightened people on earth, 
thou wouldst know from thy birth, that, to criticise the law, the j udge, 
or the office-holder, is a crime of social treason. The first dogma of 
a civilised people is the infallibity of authority.’ ”— lb. 

11 The events of the last half century have verified the farsighted 
wisdom of the distinguished Poger Collard, of whom it is recorded 
that ‘ no one was more sensible how a change of dynasty shatters 
the foundations of order, and makes future revolutions easy.”— 
Saturday Review . 

If an adventurous and audacious baker had, by a crafty admix¬ 
ture of fair promises with open violence, obtained, in some populous 
city, a monopoly of the supply of bread, and that the “elu du 
peuple” were to substitute an adulterated and acrid article for the 
pure and nutritious loaves which he had solemnly volunteered to 
supply, would all the inhabitants and their latest posterity be bound 
to put up with such deleterious and detestable food ? Nay, would 
they not rather follow the precedent set by Pharaoh, and “ hang the 
chief baker on a tree ” (Gen. xl. 19) ? The French ruler’s only aim 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


547 


in restoring universal suffrage was to destroy tlie antagonistic in¬ 
fluence of integrity, intelligence, wisdom, and experience, by tlie 
oppressive and overpowering predominance of ignorance, envy, 
prejudice, and presumption, thus transferring all power to reckless 
and desperate characters, to whom, as soon as they had served his 
purpose, ho could say— 

Rentre dans le n’eant, dont je t’ai fait sortir. 

Racine. 

It is an act of madness or criminality to place the interests and 
even the existence of society in any part of the world at the mercy 
of such a class as the Decemberist Frankenstein conjured into 
political existence, speaking of which Voltaire says, in reference to 
France, “Les Francais seront toujours moitie tigres, moitie singes, 
Us se rejouiraient e’galement a la grove, et aux grands bateleurs 
du boulevard;” whilst we are told that in America “the mob 
behaved, as mobs behave in all parts of the world, with the wisdom and 
conduct of wild beasts escaped from their cages. They burned 
offices, they plundered stores, they hung an obnoxious colonel to a 
lamp-post, and they took especial delight in hunting down unoffend¬ 
ing negroes who had the misfortune of showing themselves in the 
streets ”—Saturday Review. 

I must once more recur to the degraded and deteriorated condition 
of the French press, which is in vain sighing for its deliverance from 
compulsory silence and complete subjugation. The period is no 
doubt gone by when Persigny presided over the daily suppression 
of truth, and circulation of falsehood, and— 

Gloricux (Tune charge si belle, 

N’eut voulu pour beaucoup en etre soulage— 

II marchait (Tun pas releve, 

Et faisait sonner sa sonnette. 

La Fontaine. 

When, however, his zeal was carried beyond bounds, and proved 
to be not “ according to knowledge,” he found that— 

II n’est pas toujours bon d’avoir un liaut emploi. 

La Fontaine. 

and he was obliged to “ deloger sans trompette.” 

The delusive expectation of any advantage accruing from his 

m m 2 


548 OUGHT TRANCE TO ‘WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

retirement to the cause of free discussion was (as we have seen) very 
speedily dispelled. The Persigny whips were no sooner laid aside, 
than the Boudet scorpions raged in their stead. A few sanguine 
adventurers, who had hoped for better things, were speedily scared 
or silenced, hut— 

Un vieux routier, qui savait plus d’un tour, 

Ft. meme avait perdu sa queue a la bataille, 

Dit, “ Ce bloc enfarine ne me dit rien qui yaille— 

Je soup9onne dessous encore quelque machine— 

Rien ne te sert d’etre farine— 

Car, quand tu serais sec je n’approcherais pas.” 

La Foxtaine. 

“The time is past in France when a change of Ministry had a 
cheering effect upon the press by reason of a hope that the incoming 
chief of the Plome Department would tolerate a greater latitude of 
discussion, a freer expression of opinion. If any such hope was 
entertained by the sanguine on occasion of the advent to power of 
the present Minister of the Interior, it must by this time have been 
completely dissipated. It was recently reported in Paris that M. 
Boudet had expressed an intention of forbearance with regard to 
journalists, but it is clear either that the report was very ill-founded, 
or that his notions of forbearance are rather singular. Since he has 
been enthroned in his official arm-chair in the Bue de la Ville 
l’Evecpie, the press has had a particularly rough time of it, especially 
the provincial journals. Among these, warnings have been liberally 
distributed, and now we learn the suspension, for two months, of the 
France Centrale , a paper published at Blois.”— Times. 

“The France Centrale , published at Blois, has been suspended for 
two months. The motive for the suspension, as stated, is the paper 
having announced that the Ambassador of France at St. Petersburgh 
had demanded an audience of Prince Gortscliakoff, but had not 
obtained a word of answer. This statement is declared to be false, 
calculated to disquiet the public, and excite hatred against the 
Government. ’ ’ — Bell’s Messenger. 

“Messrs. Robin and Ilyenne have been found guilty of defaming 
the Mayor of St. Etienne by their remarks concerning the elections ; 
the first is condemned to a month’s imprisonment; the second to 
fifteen days; each to a fine of 200 francs, and the two together to 500 
francs damagos to be paid to the mayor; and the Courrier de St. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


549 


Etienne is suppressed. The two persons thus severely punished have 
appealed to the Court of Cassation.”— Times. 

I ‘ The Marseilles magistrates point out the inconvenience and 
impropriety of the double system of repression, both administrative 
and judicial, now in force with respect to the press.”— lb. 

II The judgment concludes by a declaration that an editor’s task 
would become an impossible one, if articles written in good faith and 
containing nothing dangerous to public tranquillity or hostile to 
Government were to be condemned, as offending against the organic 
decree of 1852, merely because they reproduced the rumours and 
gossip current at the Bourse or clubs.”— lb. 

“ The Temps is probably as outspoken on the subject as it could be 
without getting warned itself:— 

“ ‘The appointed time,’ it says, ‘is not yet come,’ and the press 
cannot delude itself into a belief in the proximity of ‘ the crowning 
of the edifice, for never were the papers so severely treated as they have 
been since the day when the electors of Paris and those of most of the large 
towns declared by their vote that a little more liberty would not be hurtful. 
Certainly, if some foreigner, knowing nothing of our institutions and 
of our affairs, arrived in France, and if he learned with what rigour 
other dispositions of the organic decree on the press are still carried 
out, he could not but believe that France is traversing a troublous 
period, that instincts of disorder agitate the masses; that a Govern¬ 
ment, newly established, is constrained, by exceptional circumstances, 
to impose silence on ardent competitors.’ ”— lb. 

“The Revue Nationale has received a second warning for an 
article by M. Lanfray, ‘ depreciating the policy of the Emperor, and 
misrepresenting his acts and intentions in a manner calculated to 
excite hatred and contempt.’ ”— lb. 

“The new Minister of the Interior seems to go on much as his 
predecessor did, and is as furious against Mayors, and as indignant 
against all authorities to whom the mismanagement of an election 
can be imputed, as M. de Persigny could have been. When first 
the unknown great man took to the water of Government, there 
were many little frogs that hoped he was not a bird of the real 
tyrannical sort, but he has shown them that he is as much to be 
dreaded as those who came before him. The truth is, that Impe¬ 
rialism cannot alter.”— Saturday Review. 

“M. Boudet, the successor of M. Persigny, had an excellent 


550 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


opportunity of trying what a different policy would do.”— 
Times. 

11 Not a clerk at the Home-office but rejoiced at the change; not a 
Prefect or sub-Prefect but began to breathe freely, and as for their 
administres in town and country, they hailed the approach of one 
whose previous character augured favourably for the future.”— II. 

u It is rather ominous that his successor, who cannot have for¬ 
gotten the fair promise of the Emperor’s letter, has begun by imi¬ 
tating some of the more glaring mistakes of his predecessor.”— 11. 

“ Of Mayors suspended or dismissed, and of Prefects disgraced for 
not having ‘ directed ’ universal suffrage so as to return M. Per- 
signy’s candidates, we hear every day. That terrible Minister seems 
to have taken particular pleasure in revenging himself for his losses 
by the ruin of unfortunate functionaries who failed in forcing his 
candidates on the electors.”— lb. 

“ The number of avis given already amounts to 57, eight of which 
being the second warning, addressed to the same paper, expose it to 
instant suppression.’’— lb. 

“ In the department of Ille-et-Yilaine ten mayors were also sus¬ 
pended or dismissed on the same grounds. It is clear that if this 
system be pursued there is little cause for rejoicing at the change of 
Ministers of the Interior. ’ ’— lb. 

“ An avertissement has been sent to the Steele on two grounds—first, 
for recommending the people to usurp (!!!) the prerogative which the 
Emperor holds from the Constitution (!!!)— the prerogative of making 
war or peace; and, second, for damaging by its 1 violent language ’ 
the 1 great cause 5 which it affects to serve.”— lb. 

11 The Gironde has received a second warning for publishing an 
article accusing the policy of the Emperor of wishing to avoid a war 
at any price, of being easily satisfied, and endeavouring to make the 
public believe that the review of the 14th inst. was not counter¬ 
manded on account of the heat, but from fear of manifestations being 
made contrary to this policy.”— Liberal Taper. 

His arbitrary control is exercised even about the clerical supporters 
of his dynasty; a policy as unwise as it is ungrateful. 

“At his accession, he owed so much to the support of the priests, 
that lie felt bound to conciliate them; but he has probably since 
discovered that it is the inferior clergy who possess the real power 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


551 


over the peasantry, and that they care much more for the Emperer 
than for the Pope. The Bishops, on the contrary, are exclusively 
devoted to Pome, and are, therefore, exceedingly apt to become 
unmanageable.”— Times. 

“ It seems to have been felt, that in former elections many 
electors abstained from voting, partly from a wish not to throw the 
country into confusion, and partly from a determination not to recog¬ 
nise the right of the existing Government. The Prelates who were 
consulted argued against this feeling, and called upon every citizen 
to discharge his duties. It is possible, perhaps, that although their 
direct language was thus guarded, the Government understood that 
the call was mainly addressed to citizens who were adverse to the 
Government, and that it amounted almost to a summons of oppo¬ 
sition voters.”— lb. 

11 Considering that the Archbishops and Bishops have no right to 
deliberate together, or adopt resolutions in common without the 
express permission of the Government; 

“ flavin p’ consulted our Council of State, we have decreed as 
follows:— 

“Art. 1. There is abuse of poiver (//./) in the pamphlet entitled 
Reply of certain Bishops to the Consultations addressed to them relative to 
the forthcoming Elections, signed and published by the Archbishops of 
Cambrai, Tours, and Pennes, and by the Bishops of Metz, Nantes, 
Orleans, and Chartres. (Was there no 11 abuse of poiver ” in De¬ 
cember, 1851?) 

“ The said pamphlet is suppressed. 

“ Art. 2. This is abuse of poiver (! !) in the letter addressed to our 
Minister of Public Instruction and Worship by the Archbishop of 
Tours, on the 4th day of June last. 

“ The said letter is suppressed.” 

The Printing House square oracle approves of an outrage, which, 
had it been attempted in England, would have elicited universal 
indignation. Why should the clergy be debarred from expressing 
an opinion on a matter of great public importance, when respect¬ 
fully solicited ? 

“ We shall have no difficulty in this country in understanding the 
reasons which have led to this important step, and all our sympathies 
will be with the Emperor in such a policy.”— lb. 


552 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


It seems to be assumed as a principle by the leading journal, 
that— 

il n’cst foiirbe ni crime, 

Qu’un trone acquis par la ne rende legitime. 

Corneille. 

u In France the public patience seems nearly exhausted.”— Times. 

“ So far as their reception, as they drove rather slowly along, came 
under my observation, it was tolerably good, although I heard hut one 
cheer —from a group of persons near the Passage de 1’Opera. People 
showed curiosity, and thronged to the edge of the asphalt to see the 
cortege pass, but there was certainly little appearance of cordiality , and 
still less af enthusiasm .” 

“ The Opposition is said to have had a complete triumph at the 
elections of the Councils General for the Departments of the Rhone, 
Dordogne, and Gironde.”— Times. 

u The illustrious Dalembert, at Malines, has been denouncing the 
Emperor as a liberticide and persecutor, and describing himself as 
‘ glad to escape for a time from a country which has consented to 
become the least free of the Western world.’ ”— Scotsman. 

Some English journals have of late commented with considerable 
severity upon certain French juries, which, in cases of aggravated 
and atrocious homicide, have appended to their verdicts of “ guilty” 
a recommendation to mercy, on the ground of “ extenuating circum¬ 
stances .” I enter, however, fully into their feelings and convictions. 
They have, probably, been influenced by the consideration that the 
crimes of these malefactors ought not to undergo the utmost severity 
of the law, in a country where the far more flagrant act of over¬ 
throwing a constitution by perjury and carnage, not only remains 
unpunished, but is recognised by universal Europe as a legitimate 
title to occupy an Imperial throne, and to disturb the peace of 
the world. 

On this view of the case, a murderer, instead of being sentenced 
to hard labour or imprisonment, should be decorated with the 
emblem of the Legion of Honour, and like not a few of the Decern - 
berist assassins, consigned to some snug sinecure berth, or enriched 
by some pension from the public treasury— 

Qui leur permet pendant, toute leur vie 
Memes plaisirs, et meme oisivete. 


Flortan, 


OTJGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


553 


Mai prend aux volereaux de faire lcs voleurs—> 

L’exemple est un dangerenx leurre— 

Tous les mangeurs de gens ne sort pas grands seigneurs 
Ou la gulpe a passe, le moucheron dcmeure. 

La Fontaine. 

Whilst penning these remarks, I have just learnt that a great 
crime has been perpetrated, which will excite the indignation of 
every honest mind in France. One of the conspirators who tram¬ 
pled upon its liberties, and abetted the establishment of a crushing 
and cruel despotism, through the medium of butchery and bloodshed, 
has been raised to greatness on the very ground of his guilt. 
“ Homo non magis amicus tyranno quam tyrannidi.”— Corn. Nepos. 

“M. de Persigny has been created a Duke, in testimony of regard 
for the services he has rendered to the State (!!!), and for his personal 
devotion to the Emperor.”— Liberal Taper. 

“M. le Due de Persigny has shown himself for a long time past 
very particular and very refined on the chapter of the nobility; the 
title of Duke could not descend upon a man more capable of appre¬ 
ciating and enjoying it. If such honours give some one pleasure it 
must bo admitted that they do no harm to anybody.”— Revue des 
Mondes. 

11 That which mortals covet as the greatest blessing, but which is 
the greatest curse both to themselves and the rest of mankind—the 
possession of arbitrary power—has this beside other evils, that its 
possessor imparts his caprices to his subordinates. But the tyrant’s 
appointed punishment is fear; and it is a comfort, though a poor 
one, to those whom he oppresses, that he is more terrified than 
they— 

“ Qui terret plus ipse timet, sors ista tyrannis 
Convenit.” 

Assuredly his fears are the chief of his qualities which he communicates 
to his instruments , and their terrors are only to be allayed by countless 
treacheries and merciless cruelties.”—Lord Brougham. 

“There has been a manifest exhibition of the popular influence, 
notwithstanding the constant, indeed systematic, interference of the 
executive power with the elections, and the fetters still continued on 
the press. The singularly injudicious conduct of one Minister (who has 
blundered into a formal eulogy of absolute power) turned the elections in 
some provincial towns , but still more in the capital , against the Govern- 


554 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


merit , or, it may be more truly said, in favour of the Opposition, 
men being chosen from no love of their principles, but merely 
because they opposed the Government. Though a very small addi¬ 
tion has been made to the Votes of the Opposition, yet in debating 
force it has largely gained— 

Jc lie sais qu’ obeir, 

Ecouter men devoir, me taire, et vous servir. 

II lie m’ appartient point de chercher a comprendre 

Des secrets qu’ en mon sein vous craignez de repandre ; 

Je ne veux point lever un ceil presomptueux 

Yers le voile sacre que vous jettez sur eux. 

Voltaire. 

What services has this newly fledged dignitary rendered to the 
State or to the world? We may infer, indeed, from the lucubra¬ 
tions of a high authority, that in the case of this promotion there 
are “ extenuating circumstances ,” which render it less obnoxious than 
some other recent instances of triumphant astuteness and audacity; 
but the very circumstances which establish the most powerful claims 
upon Imperial gratitude, are the causes of the horror and hatred 
which are cherished towards its objects by French patriotism and 
probity. He also is the chief apostle and most indefatigable agent 
of a Government through which the French press is enslaved, and 
the French population degraded and decimated by conscription. 

On enleve a son champ le laboureur en larmes. 

Malfilatre. 

“ M. Fialin has arrived at the summit of his long and successful 
career. He made himself He Persigny, and his Sovereign has now 
made him Duke Persigny. That old condition of things when he 
was Fialin and an attorney is now buried, like ancient Pome or 
Jerusalem, under the incrustations of successive dignities; and even 
Mr. Kinglake must acknowledge that a Duke is a Duke. Ilis 
honours appear appropriate and well-deserved! ! He has been the 
faithful friend of the most extraordinary adventurer of modern 
times, and a French Dukedom is not much to get out of the gigantic 
haul which was made by the Conspirators of December. Nor has 
his rise been regarded in France with the same shuddering and repug¬ 
nance which have been awakened by the brilliant fortunes of the 
Duke de Morny.” —Saturday Review. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 555 

“ Duke Persigny is something more than an Imperialist and a 
devoted friend of the Emperor. He is, perhaps, the one man in France 
who really and sincerely believes in the Empire —who thinks it a good 
and glorious thing in itself, and not a sad necessity of evil days. 
There are many indications that the Emperor has not this hind of faith 
in the Empire. lie is perfectly aware that there are many wishes of 
the better nature of Prance which it leaves unsatisfied, and that it 
exists at the price of constantly proving by success that it has a 
right to exist.”— Saturday Review. 

“ The bulk of Imperialists are either like the Emperor, and think 
it a great political speculation,* or they are like the Duke de Morny, 
and regard it as a very profitable job ; or they are like M. Troplong, 
or M. Gfranier de Cassagnac, and look on it as the only practical 
means of getting on in the world. There are, indeed, literary Im¬ 
perialists of the type of M. Ste. Beuve, who have a theory in favour 
of the Empire; but then their theory is simply that, in a general 
despair of everything, it is not unwise to acquiesce in what exists. But 
Duke Persigny believes in the Empire, and would believe in it if 
it were upset. And it certainly lends a sort of dignity and respect¬ 
ability to any new system of religion or government that there should he at 
least one person who has complete faith in it .”— lb. 

“He immediately makes himself comfortable by putting down 
political liberty as a curious English taste, like fox-hunting and 
prize-fighting, with which Frenchmen have nothing to do. Accord¬ 
ingly, when he was Minister of the Interior, no one was so ruth¬ 
less or so reckless as Duke Persigny —not because he was more 
violent or cruel than other Imperialists, but simply because the 
things he was opposing seemed to him to be theoretically so wholly 
unnecessary. When France had got exactly the right government 

* II ne me proposa pour regie et pour systeme 
Q,ue mon propre interet et 1’ amour de moi-meme. 

Asmodle. 

II me dit, dut mon coeur etre ingrat et cruel, 

De tout subordonner a mon bien personnel— 

De placer (le precepte est digne d’un tel maitre) 

Los limites du monde a deux pas de mon etre— 

J’ai fait de ses lemons un trop heureux emploi— 

Je n’ai, jusqu’ a ce jour, existe que pour moi. 

CoLARDEAU. 


556 


QTJGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


under exactly the riglit governor, and was flourishing and getting 
rich, it appeared merely childish that an absurd provincial editor or 
candidate should create local difficulties. The friends of political 
liberty are to I)nice Persigny much what organ-grinders are to quiet 
people who do not like music. The noise is not wanted opposite their 
door. It is not that there is any ill-will to the poor fellows who 
take this means of earning a livelihood, but there is a sensation that 
it is very disagreeable while they are there, and very pleasant when 
they go away. In the next street the music may be liked, and 
Duke Persigny has ascertained that in England people actually 
like newspapers, and speakers who go on commenting, and criticis¬ 
ing, and debating, and shouting about things which concern the 
Government. All he can say is, that his is not the establishment 
where such people are welcome, and if they will not move on he 
calls the police in a moment.”— Saturday Review. 

“ There was nothing he did, probably, of which the Emperor 
disapproved, but he was too conspicuous a man and too intimately 
associated with the fortunes of the Emperor to make it desirable 
that he should incur a very large amount of popular ill-will. Since 
his successor has been appointed, no change has been made in the 
domestic policy of the Government. Journals are warned, and editors 
crushed, and unsuccessful Prefets dismissed, and electors bullied as 
much as they used to be. But then the author of all this havoc is 
an obscure man. No one noticed his rise, and no one would notice 
his fall. Whatever he does, his name will scarcely be mentioned, 
for he is obviously the mere creature of the real Government.”— lb. 

“ The French prefects and sub-prefects are getting daily more 
despotic and intolerable in their mode of administration. One hears 
continual complaints of them, especially of the means they employ 
to influence elections, and of the maoeuvres by which they have 
succeeded in extinguishing all spirit and independence in nearly the 
whole provincial press.”— Times. 

“He can hardly honour too highly the man who honoured, and 
loved, and believed in him years ago,* when he himself was dis- 


* Robin mouton, qui, par la ville, 

Me suivait pour un peu de pain, 

Et qui m’ aurait suivi jusques au bout du monde. 

La Fontaine. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 557 

credited ; v and was no nearer Empire than a tame eag’le and some 
sham regimentals could carry him. Duke Persigny has also 
managed to keep himself clear of the baser taints of the Imperial 
history. He has not gorged himself with the plunder that falls into the 
grasp oj speculators whose private intelligence is sure to he correct. He 
tooh no active and prominent part in the coup d'etat, and was satisfied 

WITH DISCHARGING THE FRIENDLY DUTY OF SEEING THAT THE PRESI¬ 
DENT WAS AS COMFORTABLE AS POSSIBLE WHILE IT WAS GOING ON.”— 

Saturday Review. 

We do not hear, that M. Pialin remonstrated against the shock¬ 
ing and shameless butchery of men, women, and children, though 
he took no active and prominent part in the actual bloodshed. We 
are not told that he exclaimed, whilst he sat by the lire and warmed 
himself on the cold December night— 

II est vrai, que nos noms ne sauraient plus mourir— 

L’oocasion est belle—il nous la faut cherir— 

Nous serous les miroirs d’une vertu bien rare— 

Mais votre fermete tient un peu du barb are., 

Corneille. 


0 nuit, nuit effroyable! 

Peux tu prefer ton voile a de pareils forfaits! 

Voltaire. 

II goutc sa vengeance en lieu sur et tranquille. 

La Fontaine. 

Tranquille dans le crime, et faux avec douceur, 

II a jusques au bout soutenu sa noirceur. 

Voltaire. 


* J’eus V art de ressaisir ma liberte perdue; 

Et rualgre mes tyrans, malgre leurs soins jaloux, 
Par un mandge adroit je les abusai tous— 

Je nouai sous leurs yeux des intrigues obscures— 
Eien nc deconcerta mes secretes mesures— 

Si T ceil en penetrait les nuages epais, 

Sur mon front toujours froid laissant regner la paix, 
Et faux par habitude, anisi que par systeme, 

Jo uiais 1’ evidence et la veritc memo. 


Colardeau. 






558 


OUGHT FRANCE TO ‘WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Tons ne vous faites point dc mal, 

Et c’est nous qui perdons la vie. 

Due de Nivernois. 

Fais veille la terreur aux portes du palais— 

Que tout subisse ni le frein dc l’esclavage. 

Voltaire. 

II faut toujours qu’on tremble, et n’ apprenne a nous yoir, 

Qu’ arrnes de la vengeance, ainsi que du pouvoir. 

***** 

Tout pouvoir, en un mot, perit par 1’indulgence, 

Et la severite produit 1’ obeissance. 

Voltaire. 

.ces tristes vainqueurs 

Que le ciel fit si grands, sans les rernlre meilleurs. 

Voltaire. 

If any member of the desperate and disreputable triumvirate who 
conspired to effect this carnage, had been animated by one spark 
of honour or of humanity, he would have shrunk with abhorrence 
from so fell and ferocious a massacre, or protested vehemently against 
it. The only indication of remorse, or, at all events, of a desire that 
this atrocious event should be forgotten, is its omission from the pro¬ 
gramme of the historical details, which the Minister of Public In¬ 
struction allows to be promulgated in France .-* 4 
The Imperial spies and sycophants resemble— 

Ces cruels oiseaux 

Qu’on bait ici, mais pourtant qu’on caresse, 

Sous les dehors d’une douceur trattresse, 

Ils vont partout quettant ce que l’on dit, 

Ce que l’on fait, ce qu’on a dans 1’esprit— 

Puis, le tournant en cent mille manieres, 

En rendent comptc—et d’apres leurs rapports, 

Tout ausistot cuisiniers, cuisinieres, 

Nous fuit roter sans le moindre remords. 

Florian. 


* Pat these crafty and cruel tyrants thought of nothing but the acquisition 
for themselves of pelf, power, and patronage. The orators, or “ able editors,” who 
had declaimed against royalists or republican functionaries, little dreamt that the 
crisis was at hand, when— 

• Une troupe nouvelle 

Viendrait fondre sur eux plus apre et plus cruelle. 

La Fontaine. 




OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


559 


Of every Imperial renegade, it may, witli truth, be predicated that— 

II devient tour a tour loup, singe, lynx, renard— 

.... depuis mon enfancc, 

Plus quc ces animaux avide, adroit, ruse 
Chacun de ces tours la pour moi se trouve use, 

Changer d’habits, de moeurs memo de conscience, 

Je ne vois lien la que d’aise. 

Florian. 

The Medor of the poet bears a striking rescmblence to the Decern - 
berist favourite of the present day— 

L’ heureux Medor excite un peu l’enyie— 

Tel est le sort de tous les grands talens— 

Dans la ruaison valets et courtisans 
L’abhorrent tous, et tous passent leur vie 
A cajoler, a caresser Medor— 

“Qu’il est charmant! il vaut son pesant d’or,” 

S’ecrient-ils, et puis, tournant la tete, 

Disaient tout has—“ Oh l’incommode betc! 

Quand serons nous delivres de ce chien 

Florian. 

Any intelligent traveller, who contemplates the boasted “material 
prosperity ” of Paris may well say— 

Yotre pays est superbe sans doute— 

Mais il y fait pour nous un peu trop chaud— 

Je vous cheris, et vous plains, je vous jure— 

Vous etes doux, spirituels, galans; 

Mais tous les dons que vous fit la nature 
Deviennent nuls avec vos Pers ig nans * 

Delivrez en, croyex moi, votre empire. 

Florian. 

The obscurity in which General Eulliare, an esteemed veteran, 
who had served under the man of Brumaire, lately closed his honour¬ 
able career, and the still more sad and sinister fate of a devoted 
adherent to the cause of the Man of December himself, illustrate, in 
a very striking manner, the oblivious apathy of imperial gratitude. 

* I have ventured to add this word to the French vocabulary, to designate a 
species of the genus partisan, which combines unbridled arrogance towards th%% 
weak, with abject obsequiousness towards the powerful. 


5G0 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


11 IIis services were not of the hind to insure the favour of the Second 
Empire to an old officer who liad so faithfully served the Great 
Napoleon from 1807 to 1815, from the hard-won victory of Eylau to 
the closing reverse of Waterloo. His career was upright, pure, and in 
all respects honourable; but from the date at which he was put on the 
retired list, slighted and reduced in his income , we may divine the roch 
on which he split. Old services were just then less valuable than new 
ones , and the battle-field of the Paris boulevards was more 

PROLIFIC OF HONOURS AND REWARDS FOR THOSE WHO SUCCESSFULLY 
FIGURED UPON IT THAN WAS THE MEMORY OF LONG FIDELITY, A BLAME¬ 
LESS REPUTATION, AND EXPLOITS LONG GONE BY.” - Times. 

“It appears that M. Aladenise, formerly French Consul at Nice, 
whose death I lately mentioned, committed suicide by blowing out 
his brains in a room at a Paris hotel. This tragical event has caused 
a most painful sensation, the more so as the unfortunate man is said 
to have been impelled to self-destruction by want.”— II). 

“ M. Aladenise was imprisoned, after the Boulogne affair, with 
Prince Louis Napoleon at Ham. When better times came for the 
Prince he was made a consul, but it appears that latterly he was not 
employed , and his friends say that he died penniless , leaving his children 
unprovided for.” — lb. 

“ England cannot complain, because we are accustomed to 
see peerages conferred on incompetent Whigs who are so 
very weak that there is nothing to be done but to shelve them.” 
—Ib. 

“It often happens that, out of a hundred young men who have just 
attained the age for service in the army , not twenty are found sufficiently 
healthy and robust for a soldier's duties and fatigues. The conscription 
takes, as Emile de Girardin lately said, la fine fieur de la farine 
humaine in all Prance; and in these days of frequent wars and 
distant expeditions, and of temptations offered to the soldier to 
remain in the service, one may judge that but a limited portion of it 
returns to leaven physically the inferior mass. The poor sorts of 
the ‘ human flour,’ found not good enough food for powder, remain 
at home, marry, and transmit their vices of constitution or confor¬ 
mation to their offspring; and thus is each succeeding generation 
inferior to the one that went before. It is time to put a stop to such 
deterioration. ’ ’— Times. 

“Petavius has taught me long ago, that to write against some men 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONArARTES? 


561 


is the only way to have their pensions doubled. And the experience 
of later times than his has showed, that it is possible to write a man 
out of reputation into preferment.”— Bishop Atterbunj. 

I again ask whether any right-minded native of any country, 
barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, can help shrinking from all 
contact with any man, who was an accomplice to the atrocities of 
December ? If a murderous deed is to be done, the contriver who 
accomplishes it per alium , whilst he himself is faring sumptuously 
at a distance, is more justly despised and detested than the more 
courageous ruffian who performs it per se. If the chief delinquent 
had felt a momentary pang after tlio carnage of the 2nd December, 
M. Fialin would have been his encourager and encomiast— 

Vous etes trop bon roi; 

Vos scrupules font voir trop de delicatesse— 

Eh bien! manger moutons! canaille, sottc espece 
Est-ce un peche ? non, non—vons leur fitcs, seigneur, 

En les croquant, beaucoup d’ honneur. 

La Fontaine. 

Did M. Fialin’s conscience (?) prompt him to protest against the 
vile and venal encomiums, of which this atrocious fact became the 
theme ? or against the jubilant hosannas in which its perpetrators 
so freely indulged ?— 

Messieurs, voulez-vous bien suivre mon sentiment ? 

Ne vous embarquez nullement 
Dans ces douceurs congratulantes— 

C’est un mauvais embarquement, 

Et d’ une et d’ autre part—Pour un tel compliment 
Les phrases sont embarrassantes. 

Moliehe. 

If, on the part of M. Fialin, or any other member of the fortunate 
quadrumvirate , there was, at first, any scruple as to emptying the 
national purse for the purpose of filling their own, there can be little 
doubt, that such a feeling w T as ephemeral and evanescent; and 
that all have been feasting and fattening on the public spolia opima — 

A ces mots, le premier il vous happe un morceau, 

Et chacun de tirer, lc matin, la canaille, 

A qui mieux mieux—ils firent tous ripaille ; 

Chacun d’eux cut part au gateau. 

N N 


562 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TnE BONAPARTES ? 


* *■ le plus habile 

Donne aux autres 1’ exemple, et c’est un passe-temps 
Do leur voir nettoyer un monceau de pistoles. 

Si quelque scrupuleux, par des raisons frivoles 
Yeut dcfcndre 1’ argent, et dit le moindre mot, 

On lui fait voir qu’ il est un sot. 

La Fontaine. 


And thev now constitute the elite of the favoured circle at Com- 
peigne— 


Un pays oil les gens, 

Tristes, gais, prets a tout, a tout indifferens, 

Sont ce qu’il plait au prince, ou, s’ils ne peuveut 1’ etre, 
T&chent au moins de le paraitre— 

Peuple cameleon, peuple singe du maitre. 

La Fontaine. 


What a humiliating contrast is exhibited in France between the 
partisans of the Imperial regime, who are preferred and patronised, 
and the dignified and dauntless patriots, who disdainfully keep aloof 
from its allurements and its advantages! Whilst thousands are 
sending congratulations to Fialin the Fortunate, I again offer the 
homage of my respect to the illustrious Berryer, and express my 
admiration of his consistent and disinterested magnanimity— 

u Ilonores non petiit cum paterent propter vel gratiam vel 
dignitatem; quod neque peti more majorum, neque capi possent 
conservatis legibus in tarn effusis ambitus largitionibus, neque geri 
e republica sine periculo, corruptis civitatis moribus.”— Corn. JSfepos. 

“ Yir in nullo literarum genere hospes, in plerisque artibus et 
studiis diu et feliciter exercitatus, in maxime perfectis literarum dis¬ 
cipline perfectissimus. ’ ’ —Bishop Smalridge . 

Having been for some years in the habit of perusing the fulsome 
and fanatical effusions, which official sycophancy has been con¬ 
tinually offering at the shrine of Imperial self esteem, I thought 
until now that— 


The force of baseness could no further go. 

But a certain Chevalier (d'Industrie, I presume) has left even the 
Parisian senators and provincial prefects far behind, and gravely 
tells the world, that all European states are vying with each other 
in the exactness with which they are adopting and carrying out 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONArARTES ? 


5G3 


tlie democratico-despotic institutioiis of happy and regenerated 
France. The fawning and fantastic flatterer has unintention¬ 
ally rendered an essential public service by eliciting our leading 
journal’s masterly reply to his audacious and astounding lucubra¬ 
tions. He is just the kind of man who, after witnessing the success- 
fid Decemberist horrors in 1851, would have fallen down upon his 
knees before the conqueror, and exclaimed— 

C’est sans attentat, 

Que vous avez change la forme de l’etat. 

Corneille. 

The death of one of the chief props of the Imperial throne has 
just been announced, and an Imperial decree says — u Considering 
the eminent services rendered to the Government by M. Billault, his 
obsequies will be celebrated at the cost of the public treasury.” 
Thus doing honour at the cost of the public treasury to the 
adventurer who, after having stood forward as the ardent champion 
of national liberty, became, as soon as his own interest required the 
change, as keen a partizan of national degradation. 

“ Under the Republic he made rapid progress in Democratic ideas , 
but after the coup d'etat he accepted the presidency of the new Corps 
Legist at if\ and did all he could to assist in establishing the Empire.” 
John Bull. 

“ He was very versatile in his political opinions, being at one time 
a thorough Republican and Socialist; but, on the seizure of the throne 
by the present Emperor, he offered his services to the Empire, and 
has ever since, in one capacity or another, been amongst its most 
ardent supporters. ’ ’— lb . 

“ He was what we call a clever debater; and though not precisely 
a Belial , had the talent to 1 make the worse appear the better reason ”— 
Times. 

“ The ‘ Gazette de France ’, ichich had been visited with no less than 
five avertissements while M. Billault was Minister of the Interior , and 
M. Lagueronniere Director of the Department—who, having no 
longer the power to crush the press as a subordinate, is now, as 
editor of La France , the advocate of its freedom—willingly pays its 
tribute to the qualities of the late Minister. The Si be! , too, while 
calling to mind that he had in the last few years of his political life 
abandoned the liberal principles he defended so ardently in other tunes , 

• nn2 


564 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


admits tliat he possessed eminent gifts as a speaker and was an 
able exponent of the Emperor’s foreign policy.”— Times. 

“ He was an able and a ready speaker, and no one ever succeeded 
letter in dressing out a had cause in the fairest colours .”— lb. 

“In private life he was gentle and kind in manner, and had not a 
particle of the flippancy or the pomposity which marks some of the public 
men who have crept into notoriety within the last twelve years.” — II. 

“ To estimate the resources of his intellect we should have heard 
the quondam radical defending the existing regime of the press; him 
who formerly poured out his invectives on the promoters of the laws of 
September ; or justifying those exceptional laws by which the French 
people paid for the crime of Orsini and his accomplices; him who 
held up to execration the restrictive measures adopted by Parliament for 
the protection of the Sovereign after repeated attempts at assassina¬ 
tion.”— lb. 

Public morality must be at a low ebb, where treachery and tergi¬ 
versation constitute an acknowledged claim not only to honour and 
property during life, but to posthumous gratitude and respect. 

The loss of so uncompromising and unscrupulous a champion 
will, no doubt, be felt at so important a crisis in the destinies of the 
Empire, when “the period for opening the Chambers is approach¬ 
ing, and there is but one tried speaker to meet the Opposition, 
re-inforced as it has been by the last election.”— lb. 

“The condition of Poland; the question of war or peace; the 
expedition to Mexico , so costly in men and money , and prolonged beyond 
all calculation; the interminable Roman question; the finances, and 
the internal administration of the country to which the result of the 
elections has given renewed interest—all these will have to be 
explained, discussed, and defended in presence of men, few in 
number, no doubt, but strong in intellect and rich in experience, 
and not easily deluded or intimidated.”— lb. 

“ The accounts from Paris state that withdrawals of bullion from 
the Bank of Prance continue.”— lb. 

“We write with feelings of sorrow, is it possible to discover 
among us those who, as in the race described by the great poet, can 
pass from hand to hand the torch of life ? To produce such men 
should be the first duty of those who are masters of the political life 

of Prance, and how can such men be found where liberty is not ?” _ 

Revue des Deux Mondes. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 565 

It is a grand spectacle, gentlemen, and a noble example whicli 
the Emperor lias given to the world; how noble is it, also, for all 
Sovereigns to imitate him ! ! ! Let us congratulate ourselves on living 
m such an age , and let us be proud of having such a Sovereign d M. 
Chevalier must have a large idea of the swallow of an Emperor if he 
thinks lie can take all this at a mouthful.”— Times. 

“ There is a new definition of Democracy, according to which the 
most pure and genuine form of Democracy is a military tyranny 
of course a benevolent and parental military tyranny. Here 
is the soul and essence of Democracy relieved from the ex¬ 
ternal case and husk of it, which was all that the old definitions 
concerned themselves with. Here is the life and quintessence of 
popular liberty, and popular power, and popular rights, extracted 
from the raw material, and magnanimously casting aside, as dross 
which is not wanted and stands in the way, liberty of speech, right 
ol inquiry, right of discussion; in short, anything that goes under 
the head of political freedom. This is the base, caterpillar state of 
Democracy, out of which it emerges with gorgeous wings and shin¬ 
ing coat of mail—that is to say, with an army of half a million and an 
Emperor .”— lb. 

“ The French people are now supreme in the person of the Em¬ 
peror, who anticipates all their ivants, and tells them what they are to 
think and for whom they are to vote.’’’’ — lb. 

“ M. Chevalier himself tells us what French Democracy is. Well, 
then, is the new Austrian regime constructed upon that type ? If 
the Austrian Emperor were to proclaim 1 equality and fraternity ’ with¬ 
out liberty , under a military despot; were he to abolish all eldest sons 
in Austria, and subdivide the soil till not a large landowner was left; 
WERE IIE TO PRODUCE IN THIS WAY A DEAD LEVEL IN AUSTRIAN SOCIETY, 
OVER WHICH TOWERED IN IRRESISTIBLE STRENGTH ‘ PHYSICAL FORCE ’ IN 
THE SHAPE OF AN EMPEROR RULING BY TnE INSTRUMENTALITY OF A 

standing army ; were the Emperor of Austria to do all this, there 
might be some excuse for saying that he was copying French insti¬ 
tutions. But this is exactly wliat the Emperor of Austria is not 
doing; he is not introducing equality, and he is introducing liberty ; ho 
is weakening a despotism instead of strengthening one; and he is 
going to rule by means of popular assemblies , and not by a standing 
army • The Austrian political reform is upon the old popular type 
of liberty, wliich guarantees the people freedom of speech, and not 


566 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TJIE BONAPARTES ? 


upon the new French type of Democracy , which suppresses freedom of 
speech in the people , and males one man the mouthpiece of the nation .” 
— Times. 

“ Despotisms in these days cannot stop halfway, and a Gfovern- 
ment that wishes to be supreme must be prepared to go all lengths 
and—as in France or the United States— to crush opposition , and 
defy all Us enemies, and commit any amount of political crime 
THAT MAY BE NECESSARY TO INSPIRE AWE AND RESPECT.” —Saturday 

Renew. 

The same mean and mercenary mouthpiece of despotism would 
doubtless stand forward as the unblushing and unscrupulous defender 
of arbitrary and arrogant interference to control or rather to nullify 
all freedom of election. 

“ M. Lavertujon complains of the undue extension given to the 
power of the police at Bordeaux for some time past. 1 Direct or 
indirect threats,’ he says, ‘ denunciations, intimidations, appeals to 
all the bad sentiments of the human heart, such is the spectacle our 
town has for several months presented.’ ITe speaks of the detest¬ 
able habits, into which a certain class of the local authorities have 
fallen, and appeals to the justice of the Prefect to put an end to 
them.”— Times. 

“The secretary-general of the Mairie positively refused to let 
M. Lavertujon see the lists. His representations to the secretary 
that he was acting illegally, that the law enjoined that every facility 
should be given to insure the sincerity and loyalty of the elections, 
were all in vain. 

“ ‘ He informed me that the municipality had received upon this 
head formal instructions from Senator Pietri, and he persisted in his 
refusal. I considered it right to have this singular cause of refusal 
certified by a notarial act, and I proceeded with the other part of my 
verification.’ 

“That other part was the ascertaining whether certain persons 
were disqualified as voters; but in this M. Lavertujon met with 
equal difficulties, so far as the authorities could put them in his 
way.”— Ih. 

“ The Dehats asks, with great reason, by what means a rejected 
candidate can control electoral operations, and satisfy himself that 
lie has been legitimately defeated, if the Administration or the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 567 

Municipalities everywhere adopt the system practised in the case of 
M. Lavertujon.”*' 

Is it possible that Franco can much longer submit, not only with¬ 
out a struggle, but in perfect silence, to such a galling and ignomi¬ 
nious imposture ? Is there one independent and intelligent patriot 
who is not exclaiming in his heart— 


Jc dois tout i\ la main, qui rompt mon csclavage ? 

Pertharite. 

What concord has light with darkness, liberty with despotism, 
Decgmberist usurpation with law or loyalty, humanity or justice ? 

Any contemplative French traveller, who breathes for a season 
the air of freedom near the pure Genevan lake, may quote, with, a 
sigh, the eulogy of one of the greatest of his national poets— 

C’est sur ces bords heureux 
Qu’ habile des humains la deesse eternelle, 

L’ame des grands travaux, l’objet des nobles voeux, 

Que tout mortel embrasse, ou desire, on rappelle, 

Que vit dans tout les coeurs, et dont le nom sacre 
Dans les cours des tyrans est tout bas adore , 

La Liberte ! 

Voltaire, 


* A much esteemed friend once complained, that I made too liberal a use of 
extracts from the public prints. But I have done so intentionally, in the hope of 
thus furnishing to future historians some interesting materials, which might havo 
otherwise been overlooked. The amount of talent, eloquence, and sagacity, dis¬ 
played in the daily or weekly lucubrations of the British press, is often a theme for 
admiration and surprise, and it is to be regretted, that they are so soon consigned to 
oblivion. We may apply to the profound or pungent passages, which are continu¬ 
ally exciting a deep, but ephemeral, interest—what Massillon says of our earliest 
years, “ Que laissent elles de reel dans votre souvenir ? pas plus qu’une ombre de la 
nuit—vous revez que vous avez lu ; voila tout ce qui vous en reste.” This fact is 
illustrated by the following quotation from the Times :—“ The interest, which was 
roused by the late elections, has completely passed away.” But it is important, that 
some portion, at least, of the incidents, which stamp indelible disgrace upon Imperial 
intrigue and interference, together with the comments which these arbitrary pro¬ 
ceedings elicited, should be preserved in a portable and popular form. 



568 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Ilelas! quo sort la bonne chere 
Quand on n’a pas la liberte ? 

* * * * # 

Quel que soit le plaisir que cause la vengeance, 

C’est 1’ acbeter trop clier, que 1’ acbeter d’un bien 
Sans qui lcs autres ne sont rien. 

La. Fontaine. 

It is difficult to determine, whether dread or detestation of the 
House of Orleans predominates most in the mind of the Man of 
December. These feelings may be traced to two separate but cognate 
causes:—(1). He had attempted to injure Louis Philippe, and had 
twice undertaken a piratical expedition to subvert his throne. 
(2). He had been treated with lenity, and w r as glad to avail himself 
of an opportunity to manifest his ingratitude for the favour received. 
“ Accepting a small sum of money from the Sovereign, whom he had 
been trying to dethrone, Prince Louis was shipped off to America 
by the good-natured King of the French.”— Liberal Paper. 

The venerated Queen Marie Amelie was prevented from obtaining 
a service of porcelain from Sevres— 

“ Queen Marie Amelie sent an order from Claremont a week or 
two ago to the Sevres manufactory, near Paris, for a certain number 
of articles to complete a service of porcelain. The answer said to be 
given was, that instructions had been received from the department 
of the Minister of State to execute no order for the Queen , or for any 
other member of the Orleans family! The Minister of State is M. 
Walewski. What danger to the Imperial dynasty this great states¬ 
man and greater dramatist dreaded in allowing half-a-dozen cups 
and saucers to be manufactured for an illustrious lady—illustrious in 
every respect—the said M. Walewski only knows. Queen Marie 
Amelie, you need not be told, is the mother of the Duke of Orleans, 
M. Walewski’s early patron ; and it must be admitted that the little 
affair about the Sevres cups and saucers, if correctly reported, is 
quite worthy of the ex-protege .”— lb. 

“ However low the estimate one may form of official gratitude and 
official nature in this country, I confess that it was with some diffi¬ 
culty I could bring myself to believe, that the simple fact of a family, 
that had once ruled over France, being in exile, w r as considered by a 
powerful, a popular, and enlightened Government a reason sufficient 
for excluding them, not from France, but from purchasing porcelain 
at the public manufactory of Sevres.”— Times. 


OUGHT PRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


5G9 


One journal positively affirmed, doubtless on “good authority,” 
that the statement of the order for the porcelain being refused on 
the ground mentioned is “ a fabrication.” To this charge the follow¬ 
ing letter will probably be considered as rather a fair answer:— 

“ Imperial Manufactory of Sevres, June 18 . 

“ Sir, —If I waited so long before replying to the order which you 
have sent me for the execution at the manufactury at Sevres of a 
certain number of articles to complete a service executed at Sevres 
for the late King Louis Philippe, it is because I have been obliged 
to demand of the Minister of the Imperial Household the permission 
to accept the order. Now, this permission has been refused me. I 
regret much to have to announce to you this fact, but I have no 
alternative but to obey the orders which are given me. 

“ Receive, &c., 

“ V. Regnault, Director.” 

Such an act of paltry vindictiveness must exasperate, but cannot 
surprise, every mind that appreciates virtue and respects misfortune. 
The Man of December virtually adopts the strong and striking 
language of our great bard :— 

Wherein dost thou joy ? 

Who sues, and kneels, and says, God save the Queen ? 

Where be the bending knees that flatter’d thee ? 

Where be the thronging troops that follow’d thee ? 

Decline all this, and see what now thou art. 

* * * # * 

For one that scorn’d at me, now scorn’d of me— 

For one commanding all, obey’d of none— 

That hath the course of justice wheel’d about, 

And left thee but a very prey to time — 

Having no more but thought of what thou wert, 

To torture thee the more, being what thou art. 

Shakespeare. 


How different were the conduct and feelings of upright and honour¬ 
able republicans towards the respected and consistent adherents of 
the Orleans family, who are objects of insult, suspicion, and contempt 
to the Bonapartists, although (or rather because ) their character, and 
that of the Statesmen of the Restoration, are those appreciated by a 
liberal pen, in a spirit of courtesy and kindness. 


570 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TITE BONAPARTES ? 

u Provisional Government (continues M. Gamier Pages) liad not 
for an instant dreamed of adding new persecutions to the persecu¬ 
tions of fortune. Were not the calamities which had struck down 
the Orleans family sufficiently terrible ? To strike at them again in 
a foreign land, to be spying out the consolation which alleviated 
their condition, would have been unworthy of the nation; and such 
a thought never once crossed the mind of a member of the Provisional 
Government. Quite the contrary. In the deliberations respecting 
the ex-Poyal family, and their vast property, the feeling was unani¬ 
mous, and it was this—that those who had had the high honour of 
directing the destinies of Prance were entitled to be received in every 
part of the world with the respect due to the lofty position which 
they had occupied, and that the respect paid to the exiles was still a 
homage to Prance.”* 

(( Whatever were the political faults of the men who then had 
the destinies of Prance in their hands, it is impossible to refuse them 
the merit—and as times go it is no ordinary merit—of rectitude of 
purpose and unblemished integrity.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The abolition of the passport nuisance does not exempt those 
persons from inconvenience on landing in Prance, who are supposed 
to have been honoured with the intimacy of the Orleans family. All 
persons suspected of contact with Claremont are subjected to serious 
annoyance. Their baggage is rigorously overhauled.”— Times. 

“I heard, some few days back, that the names of the present 
Deputies are undergoing the most rigid scrutiny on the part of the 
authorities of the Home-office, with a view to eliminate every one 
supposed to retain the slightest tinge or taint of Orleanism. The 
liatred to Orleanism amounts to a monomania with M. Persigny. 

“I gave, a few weeks ago, the particulars of the arrest and im¬ 
prisonment of M. Gautier, tutor to the Duke de Nemour’s sons, 
because he happened to have three copies of the Duke d’Aumale’s 
pamphlet in his portmanteau, among several other books. It was 
too absurd to suppose that M. Gautier had those three copies for the 
purpose of hawking, in the legal meaning of the word. The Court 

* • • • • tons ces Liens, ces tresors, ces richesses, 

Sont-ils votre conquete, ou vous, sont-ils donnds ? 

Est ce pour lcs rayir que vous le detronez ? 


Voltaire. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


571 


thought so, too, and, on Saturday, gave judgment to that effect, and 
dismissed the charge, hut ordered the three copies of the pamphlet 
to he confiscated. 

“ I have already mentioned, that no French paper has been allowed 
to insert the judgment of the Court, and that the printers were 
warned against printing anything alluding to it; and you will 
observe that the judgment is so worded, that neither the title 
of the work nor the name of the author appears in it.”— Liberal 
Paper, » 

The publishers of the Duke d’Aumale’s spirited and admirable 
pamphlet, which was elicited by an unprovoked and insolent attack, 
have been treated with a harshness which has excited universal 
indignation. We will quote an Imperial anathema against Eng¬ 
land for showing respect to the Orleans family, and also an epitome 
of M. de Persigny’s opinion of the policy and principles of the July 
Government, after which we subjoin a few extracts from his Poyal 
Highness’s terse and telling brochure :— • 

“ The House of Hanover, we know, is a favourite theme with the 
Minister of the Interior, who apparently has not carried his re¬ 
searches into English history much further. The writer informs us, 
that the world has hitherto committed a grievous error in supposing 
that France had any sort of liberty under a July Government. ‘ Cen¬ 
tralisation, corruption, and outrageous protection—such was liberty 
under the House of Orleans.’ It was all nonsense, the idea that 
there was anything approaching to a free Parliament or a free press. 
The principle is noiv formally laid down that 1 liberty was only made for 
the friends , and not for the enemies , of the State ’—the 1 enemies of the 
State ’ meaning , of course , those who tool part in public affairs before the 
establishment of the Imperial system .” 

“ I gave you some account, at the time it occurred, of the seizure 
of a work by the Duke d’Aumale, while it was yet in manuscript, by 
order of the Minister of the Interior; of the interview of the printer 
and the Duke’s representative with the Prefect of Police ; and the 
surrender of the property, with the intimation, however, that the 
moment the first volume was printed and ready for publication it 
would be seized again. Promises of this kind the Prefect of Police 
seldom fails to keep ; accordingly, the moment the work was in type 
the printing-office was once more visited by the police-agents, and 


572 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


the whole impression carried off. I need not repeat, that there 
was no legal ground for this proceeding on the part of the police. 

“ M. Dufaure showed that for this ‘administrative seizure’ there 
was no ground whatever, for the circular of the Minister, which was 
the only authority the Procureur pleaded, was no authority at all in 
point of law; and no motive for the act was attempted to be shown 
by the Procureur. At the close of his speech there was a murmur of 
applause from the public, which was, of course, checked by the pre¬ 
siding judge.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ The printer and publisher of the Duke d’Aumale’s pamphlet 
have renounced the idea of appealing against the sentence which 
condemns them—the former to six months’ imprisonment and £200 
fine, the latter to one year’s imprisonment and £200 fine. 

“ The excessive severity shown towards the comparatively obscure 
accomplices in a political offence, for which the prime author could 
not be punished or prosecuted, has shocked every feeling of common 
justice and humanity; and if the opinion of independent men had, 
on such matters, any weight in France, those who were but the 
mere channel of publicity would have a fair chance, if not of being 
acquitted, at least of being mulcted, in the second instance, in a com¬ 
paratively light penalty proportioned to the offence. You meet nobody , 
no matter to what party he belongs— Imperialist, Orleanist, Legitimist, 
or Democrat— who does not in private cry out against this excessive 
severity. But there is no more remarkable proof of the 

PROSTRATION OF PUBLIC SPIRIT, THAN THE SILENCE OF THE PRESS ON 

THIS subject. Neither in the newspapers, nor yet in the Chambers, 
has a single voice ventured to echo what is said out of doors—none 
to complain of that unnecessary rigour, nor even to plead for mitiga¬ 
tion. Had the question been one of Montenegrin nationality, or of 
the introduction of the “immortal principles of ’89” among the 
subjects of the King of Dahomey, not a Gkierault or a Limayrac 
but would write endless articles on those interesting children of 
nature; but for a fellow-citizen ‘ legally oppressed ’ (to use the 
appropriate language of the Emperor) not a man has even the safe 
courage to say a word.”— Times. 

“ A return to political tyranny is hardly worthy the victor of Sol- 
ferino and the initiator of French Free Trade. And yet it seems 
that we have not done with prosecutions, and seizures, and the sum¬ 
mary jurisdiction of Prefects. The dreary coercion which marked 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 573 

the first years of the new Empire is not to be allowed to pass away 
from the minds of the world. One would think that the conviction 
of the printer and publisher of the Duke d’Aumale’s pamphlet, and 
the heavy sentences upon them, would have satisfied Bonapartist 
vengeance and dispelled Bonapartist fears. A year’s imprisonment 
for the offence of giving publicity to a clever attack on an Imperial 
personage is certainly a penalty sufficient to check the patrons of 
satire for the future. But the ways of absolute monarchs are not as 
those of ordinary men. The Imperial Court sees a (VAumale in every 
publisher’s bach-parlour. It is not enough that Orleanist writings are 
liable to bring on their authors and promulgators penalties as severe 
as those with which heinous offences are visited. These writings are 
so dangerous that exceptional means must be used for their repres¬ 
sion. The Prefects have been accordingly ordered ‘ to watch with 
care any attempt at publication which may be made in the names of 
persons, wdio have been either banished or exiled.’ ”— Times. 

“ M. Dufaure’s speech for the publisher of the Duke’s pamphlet 
produced an effect even on the select auditory permitted by favour to 
hear it. After alluding to the letter of Prince Napoleon to the Em¬ 
peror against the seizure of the pamphlet, in which the Prince says, 

‘ To stifle is not to answer,’ M. Dufaure observed—‘ Yet the Grovern- 
ment has reserved to itself the power both to stifle and answer. And 
what answers ! We have had seven of them anonymous out of nine. 
The two that are signed are from some imaginary Count, whom no¬ 
body knows, and from a journalist whom every one too well knows 
to be at the disposal of Prince Napoleon. What do these shameful 
productions say of themselves ? They mutilate, they falsify, they 
misquote the passages of the Duke d’Aumale’s pamphlet, which the 
Minister is now prosecuting after the police had seized it. Here, 
gentlemen, is what I read in the works of the Emperor Napoleon 
III., vol. 1. page 419 :—‘Take care (he is speaking to the exile), 
take care of every word that issues from your lips, of every sigh 
that escapes from your heart, for there are people paid to give a false 
interpretation to your words and your sighs. If you are calumniated, 
do not reply; if you are offended, remain silent. The or gans of 
publicity are shut against you, and they accept no explanations from 
banished men. The exile must submit to be calumniated without 
answering, and he must suffer without complaining.’ These words, 
gentlemen, I understand as the bitter complaint of the exile, but I 


574 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


do not understand them as the programme of the Government of an 
exile who has become Emperor. This quotation from the Emperor’s 
works, and the comment, produced a sensation even on the judges 
themselves.”— Liberal Paper. 

“ A friend of the Orleans family lately called on the Prefect of 
Police, and in a friendly way pointed out to him the monstrous ille¬ 
gality of the seizure of the Duke d’Aumale’s late book. The Prefect, 
who is a pleasant, jolly fellow, replied with amiable candour, ‘ Don’t 
talk to me about legality. If your friends had thought less about 
legality, they would have been here yet; and I recommend them, if 
ever they get a chance again, to do as I do now.’ 

“With an air and a tone of voice awfully imposing, he informed 
the journals of the most enlightened capital of Europe that, in the 
absence of M. de Persigny (M. de Persigny was at that moment en¬ 
gaged in constitutional exercise, and probably meditating fresh cir¬ 
culars on the freedom of discussion), M. de Laguerroniere ‘ invited ’ 
them not to give the least hint to their readers that there was held 
anywhere in London a feast called the ‘ Literary Fund Dinner,’ at 
which the Duke d’Aumale presided, and after dinner made a speech 
in English on English literature, and proposed toasts. As it was 
evidently the opinion of M. de Laguerroniere that the enq ire would 
be endangered if so astounding an occurrence were made known, 
the journals obeyed. 

“There is one of the maxims of your Government, an essential 
maxim, which Louis Philippe was too good-natured to have applied. 

‘Should Legitimists,’ you said, ‘or exalted Bepublicans, attempt 
with 1,000 or 1,500 men a descent on our coasts, we should well and 
beautifully shoot them.’ Now, it so happens that, under the 
Government of July, there was an incursion at Strasburg and there 
was a descent at Boulogne, but there was no one shot. A grave 
fault, no doubt. Well, then, the Orleanists are incorrigible; and 
had they to begin again I verily believe they would be as clement 
as ever. Put , as for the Ponapartes, when the question is one of shooting, 
they certainly heep their word; and, Prince, of all the promises that 
you and yours have made, or could make, that is the only one on 
the execution of which I could count,”— Due d' Aumale. 

“ Utter prayers for France. Those prayers are that my country 
may come out safe from a condition in which enterprises are 
attempted which it has not previously approved; in which it goes to 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


575 


rest under Protection, and awakes in the arms of Free Trade; passes 
without transition from peace to war, from prosperity to ruin; and 
my prayer is that it may be delivered from ‘ good pleasure,’ what¬ 
ever be the form under which it is disguised. When the nation, 
when every French citizen shall enjoy the same security, the same 
liberty, the same inviolability, then, indeed, people will have the 
right to inscribe at the head of our Constitution the principles of 
1789, disengaged from the utopias of ’91, from the crimes of ’93, 
and from the hypocrisy of another epoch (!!!) I conclude. It 
is a pang uselessly added to that of exile to fix the eye too long on 
the evils and the danger of one’s country .—Due D'Aumale. 

“It was known at the Bourse, that a brochure of much interest 
had just appeared at a publisher’s in the Rue Richelieu, and 
that it was an answer to Prince Napoleon’s attack on the 
Orleans’ Princes in his speech in the Senate. In a few minutes 
half-a-dozen copies were produced, and groups formed on the 
steps of. the building to hear it read aloud. It was ascertained 
that a bookseller in a street hard by had just got a supply of 1,500 
copies. In less than an hour the whole 1,500 had been bought. 
The publisher’s shop is close at hand, and people crowded in such 
numbers that the shopman hardly sufficed to hand out the copies. 
The stock was soon exhausted, and a fresh one called for at the 
printer’s. At 3 o’clock near 500 copies were at the Bourse. When 
the impression was exhausted, either by sale or by the hands of the 
police, I hear that five francs, and in some instances ten francs, 
were offered for a copy; and yesterday persons who failed in pur¬ 
chasing set-to to copy the work in manuscript.”— Times. 

The royal family, nobility, and diplomacy of London have not, 
however, been deterred from showing respect to the members of 
that illustrious house, which M. Bonaparte hates with a cruel and 
contumacious hatred. At the recent auspicious marriage in the 
Orleans family, “the company provided with tickets for the chapel 
began to arrive at 10 o’clock, and in less than half-an-hour the 
edifice was fully occupied in every part, except that small portion 
reserved for the Boyal party. Among the arrivals from London 
were the Austrian and Prussian Ambassadors, the Belgian, Hano¬ 
verian, Bavarian, Italian, Portuguese, Saxon, and Spanish Minis¬ 
ters. Among the French ladies and gentlemen present were the 
Marquis and Marchioness de Chanabilles, the Duke and Duchesse de 


576 


OUGHT FRANCE TO 'WORSHIP THE RONAPARTES? 


Galliera, the Marquis and Marchioness d’Harcourt and Made¬ 
moiselle d’Harcourt, the Countess Paul de Segur, Count Louis de 
Segur, Madame de Vatry, Count Ludovich de Beauvoir, General 
Count Montesquieu, General Count de Chabannes, General Drolen- 
vaux, the Marquis de Berenger, the Marquis de Bouille, Count 
Rene de Bouille, the Count and Countess de Piers and Made¬ 
moiselle d’Henin, Dr. de Mussey, M. Charles Mallet, Count de 
Jarnoc, Baron de l’Espee, M. and Madame Henry de 1’Espee, 
Viscount Paul Daru, Viscount de la Redorte, Viscount de Bowdy, 
M. Oliver de Bowdy, M. Charles Beille, M. le Colonel Solis, M. le 
Baron de Bacourt, M. Estanselin, M. Roger de Soitivaux, the 
Marquis de Fontanelle, M. Paravey, M. de Chanlin, and many 
others.” 

It must be irksome and humiliating for the younger scions of the 
most ancient and distinguished house in Europe, to be lectured and 
taken to task by the English journals, for replying to the charges 
of repelling the calumnies of vulgar but triumphant malignity. 

“ The world, in fact, is now too busy to trouble itself with dynastic 
quarrels. The Duke D’Aumale accuses the Bonapartes of showing 
arrogance in prosperity, and a want of generous feeling in their 
allusions to the old historic Royal Family which is now banished 
from the soil of France. The accusation may be founded in jus¬ 
tice, but this private grievance does not entitle him to a hearing from 
Europe. It is a kind of offence which is not actionable. Breaches 
against good taste and good feeling may be committed by a new 
and elated dynasty, but so long as no substantial wrong is in- 
flictedy the world must be pardoned for taking little interest in the 
mattery and for condemning the party which makes it an excuse 
for issuing a violent pamphlet. Let the Princes of the House of 
Orleans continue that retired and becoming course of life which they 
have followed for thirteen years; they can do no good to themselves 
by bandying invectives with such politicians as the Bonapartes.”— 
— Times. 

“ That the history of these personages, when closely examined, 
may give an opportunity for many scandalous stories and stinging 
remarks is quite possible ; but we doubt if it becomes the member of 
a family, which has hitherto borne misfortune with so much dignity, 
to throw mud at those who, after all, will not be injured by such 


OUGHT FRANCE TO ‘WORSHIP TnE DONAT ARTES ? 577 

soiling. France lias taken tlie Bonapartes, knowing full well what 
they are. ‘ Adventurer,’ ‘Intriguer,’ ‘Conspirator,’ ‘Deceiver,’ are 
epithets which will do them not one jot of harm, for the character 
which they indicate has been no bar to an almost unanimous choice 
by the French people.”— Times. 

I am only astonished, that the words “ Comme Charles X.,” wrung 
from a wounded heart, in the season of peril and perplexity, do not 
sometimes ring in their ears, and excite in their breasts a feeling of 
regret, at the remembrance of the fatal feuds, which paved the way 
for their temporary elevation, and subsequent downfall. Of the 
Man of December, it may, at all events, be said— 

.... II trono 
Non tolse al proprio sangue. 

ALriERl. 

The amiable and accomplished Duke d’Aumale makes no more men¬ 
tion of the elder branch than if it were already extinct, unless, 
indeed, the expression, “ hypocrisy of another epoch ” refers to the 
period immediately subsequent to the restoration. During these 
peaceful and prosperous years, the effects of “hypocrisy ” were, in my 
judgment, rather experienced than exemplified by the two monarchs, 
who successfully reigned ; and I often heard, whilst Charles X. re¬ 
sided at Holyrood, pathetic and patriotic complaints, on the part of 
his loyal and high-minded adherents, of the dissimulation practised 
towards him by persons who overwhelmed him with protestations of 
attachment and allegiance, whilst they were secretly undermining 

the foundations of his throne— 

» m 

N’allez pas meriter un present plus severe, 

Trahir toutcs les loix, en voulant les venger, 

Et renverser l’etat, au lieu de le changer. 

Voltaire. 

If any one had whispered to that candid and confiding monarch— 

Songez que votre ami peut vous trahir un jour; 

the answer might have been— 

Qu’il me trahissc, helas ! sans quo mon coeur l’offense — 

Sans qu’une douleureuse et coupable prudence, 

Dans l’obscur avenir cherche un crime doutcux—■ 

S’il cesse un jour d’aimer, qu’il sera malhereux S 

0 0 


578 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


S’il trahit son devoir, je dois encor le plaindre— 

Mon amitic fut pure, et je n’ai rien a craindre— 

Qu’il montre a tous les yeux les secrets de mon coeur— 

Ces secrets sont 1’amour, l’amitie, la douleur, 

La douleur de le voir, infidele, et parjure, 

Oublier ses semens, comme moi mon injure. 

Quoted, by La Harpe. 

I am firmly convinced (as has been often stated before) that a cordial 
reconciliation between the two branches, on the basis of recognising 
the right of Henry V., is an essential preliminary to the speedy 
restoration of the one, and to the eventual succession of the other— 


Tutto e soggetto a cambiamento—e strano 
Saria, che gli odi nostri 
Soli fossero eterni. 

Metastasio. 

Vous pouvez raffermir par un accord heureux, 

Des peuples et des rois les legitimes nceuds, 

Et faire encor fleurir la liberte publique 
Sous l’ombrage sacre du pouvoir monarcliique. 

Voltaire. 

To Henry V. I would respectfully say— 

Par ta felicite fais la bonheur du monde. 

Voltaire. 

And to his illustrious and universally respected cousins— 


C’est un sort assez beau de ne ceder qu’& lui, 

Quinault* 


To a King who— 


Affable avec noblesse, et grand avec bonte, 

Separera 1’ orgueil d’ avec la majeste. 

***** 

Capable egalement d’ etre avec dignite 
Et dans 1’ 6 cl at du trone, et dans 1’ obscurite— 

Voltaire. 


0 


Why should they, through their continued estrangement enable 
their deadliest foe to play fast and loose with the honour and happi¬ 
ness of the world ? 

How sad it is to see so many renegades, from whom better 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 579 

things might have been expected, offering at his shrine the incense 
of hollow and hyperbolical panegyric! They are well aware that he 
is one of the rulers— 

Qui veulent tous les jours des louanges nouvelles. 

La Fontaine. 

Of any apostate Imperialist, the party, which he quits, may well say 
to his new master :— 


Garde un ingrat que je te livre, 

Des qu’il a pu te suivre, 

II n’est plus digne que do toi. 

Bernard. 

“ It will be an odd spectacle to witness, after near half a century, 
the man (Dupin) whose fust attitude in public life was to advocate 
the formal deposition of the first Napoleon by a vote of the repre¬ 
sentative body (such as it was) in 1814,' now chairman of the same 
assembly under Napoleon.”— Times. 

Many, which were his fellows hut of late, 

Some better than his value, on the moment 
Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance, 

Kain sacrificial whisperings in his ear, 

Make sacred e’en his stirrup. 

Shakespeare. 

He knows that, through the atrocious medium of military constraint, 
he may set at nought the opinions of all that is wise and good, either 
in France or abroad. 

“ He went against the judgment and the doctrines of the educated 
classes when he embarked in his Italian war, and he made France 
take a part, from which the political leaders of the Republic, no less 
than of the Constitutional G-overnment, had sedulously tried to keep 
her .”—Saturday Review. 

“The Man of December has his ( Life of Cmsar * on the anvil. 
How can a gentleman addicted to literary pursuits, and immersed 
in his studies, be thought guilty of treason against the liber¬ 
ties OF his subjects, and the intellect of his country ?”— II). 

His Minister of Public instruction has exhibited an amount of 

o o 2 


580 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


baseness and effrontery, scarcely parallelled in ancient or modern 
times,* openly tampering with the facts of history, and rendering the 
influence of his office subservient to the purposes of malignity and 
misrepresentation. It is disgusting to read the profession of candour 
and honesty prefixed to his audacious programme. 

“ Believe a man who never yet flattered a human heiny ! ! You who 
are the France of the future can keep your heads and your hopes 
high, for he, who holds in his mighty hand the destinies of our 
country, possesses a grand heart and a noble intellect. Gentlemen, 
the most truly liberal man of the empire is the Emperor !!! 

Far more befitting would have been such a declaration as this:— 

I love you, sir, 

Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty ; 

Beyond what can he valued rich or rare, 

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour— 

A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable 
Beyond all manner, of so much I love you. 

Shakespeare. 

He adopts the recognised historical canon, with respect to the 
Bonapartes and the Bourbons, but with a widely-different application 
in each separate case— ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non 
audeat. Let nothing be spoken in regard to the Bourbons which is 
to their credit, however true, and everything alleged, which can tend 
to their disparagement, however unfounded. Let nothing be so 
much as mentioned, which tends to disgrace the Bonapartes, how¬ 
ever undeniable, and nothing withheld, however false, which they 
would wish to be blazed abroad for their advantage. 

* Another minister of State seems equally intent upon “ glorying in his shame,” 
nd rivetting the fetters of his country. 

“ M. Girardin has got an avertissement for his article in Tuesday’s Presse, in which 
he examined the difference between the direction of public policy, which belongs to 
the Emperor, and the carving of it out, which is the only thing Ministers, under 
the existing system, have to do. The reason alleged by the Minister for the inflic¬ 
tion of this punishment is, that M. Girardin spoke of the conduct of foreign affairs ‘ as 
alarming to the country, and dangerous to public credit.’ The Minister who signs 
the avertissement is the free-trader, the partisan of freedom of speech, the liberal, par 
excellence, M. Pouhcr, Minister of State, who , perhaps, was jealous of the renown 
gained by 31. Persigny by similar exploits against the press*” — Times. 


OUGHT TRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


581 


“M. Duruy’s programme begins with the period of the Revolu¬ 
tion, and comes down to the occupation of Mexico. It is clear that 
there are events between these two dates, in which the Minister of a 
Sovereign, who bears the name and lias inherited the power of the 
fiist Bonaparte, cannot be comprehensive and as impartial as he 
should be. In the 9th section of the programme, and under the 
head of ‘ Louis XVIII.,’ the only French subjects which the Professor 
treats of are the military occupation of the French territory the 
‘ White Terror ’ (; terreur blanche— the name given by the discontented 
to the reactionary measures under the Restoration); to the excesses 
of the mob against the instruments of their late oppressors , Marshals 
Ney and Brune; the Chamber known by the name of Introuvable ; 
economical measures, with a view to the new policy. 

“ Those excesses and that reaction are no doubt condemnable, but- 
there were other acts of the Restoration, which deserved notice from 
an impartial Minister of Public Instruction, as well as those which 
he specifies in his short summary. Under the Restoration the 
system op acertissement was not known ; there was liberty of the 
press and liberty of speech far beyond avhat are now tolerated, 

AFTER A LAPSE OF NEARLY FIFTY YEARS ; AND HE MIGHT HAVE REMEM¬ 
BERED, THAT SUCH MEN AS JULES FaVRE, OlLIVIER, PlCARD, AND 
OTHERS, WHO ARE NOT PARTISANS OF THE OLD MONARCHY, HAVE BORNE 
TESTIMONY TO THE LIBERAL MEASURES OF THE RESTORATION IN THE 

Legislative Body.*' 

“ The Programme of M. Duruy is incomplete. lie refers to the 
‘ White Terror,’ the death of Marshal Key, who was tried for treason 
by the Chamber of Peers, and executed. The assassination of Mar¬ 
shal Brune, in 1815, was the act of the infuriated mob of Avignon. 
The execution of Marshal 'Ney may have been impolitic , but tty trial was 
public , and conducted according to the usual forms. But while M. Duruy 
alludes to that execution as an historical fact, he should not, in 
COMMON FAIRNESS, PASS OVER IN TOTAL SILENCE THE MURDER OF TIIE 

Duke d’Enghien in the ditch of Vincennes by order of the First 
Consul, and which produced so great a sensation throughout 
Europe. Not a word is said in the programme of the kidnapping 
of Charles IV., and the iniquitous invasion of Spain ; nor of the 

Pluck the grave, wrinkled slaves and fools from the bench, 

And minister in their steads. 


Shakespeare.. 


582 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


ABDUCTION OF POPE PlUS VII., AND HIS CAPTIVITY AT FoNTAINBLEAU ; 
NOR OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES IN CONSEQUENCE 
OF ITS ADDRESS TO THE EMPEROR IN 1813; NOR OF THE STRASBOURG 
AFFAIR OF 1836 ; NOR OF THE BOULOGNE EXPEDITION OF 1840 ; NOR OF 
THE TRIAL IN THE HOUSE OF PEERS ; NOR OF THE 2ND OF DECEMBER, 
1851 ; NOR OF THE CONFISCATION OF THE ORLEANS PROPERTY; 1101’ of 

several other events of contemporaneous history, which are quite as 
important in an historical programme, as the ‘ establishments at Vin¬ 
cennes and Vessinet, for convalescent and mutilated artisans,’ or the 
‘foundation of the Orphelinat of the Prince Imperial,’ on which the 
Minister dwells complacently.”— Times. 

“It is perfectly in keeping with the whole system of Imperialism, 
to try to seize on the National mind from its infancy, and to mould it 
as the Empire requires that it should be moulded. The perversion 
of modern history is an enormous engine of authority, which a 
Government, that aims at making any other Government impossible, 
may be wise to take advantage of .—Saturday Review. 

‘ ‘ The official perversion of modern history is an additional breach 
between the educated and liberal intellect of France and the Empire. 
But the Emperor has long ago realised the fact, that his system and 
the supremacy of a free national intellect are incompatible. He 
reigns in despite and in defiance of philosophers, and poets, and his¬ 
torians ; and the history of Pome may, perhaps, be accepted as an 
indication, that a throne guarded by soldiery, and passively counte¬ 
nanced by the masses, may survive such shocks as philosophers, and 
poets, and historians can give it.— lb. 

“The Imperial Government does not wish to be fair. It wishes 
to exist, and, in order to exist, it must keep alive the notion that it 
alone gives France what she wants. It could scarcely have a more 
effectual means of instilling this belief, than the adoption of modern 
history to its purposes.— lb. 

“ There are, indeed, some minds that will recoil from this creation 
of a history suited only to Imperialism, and that when riper years 
give an opportunity for examination, will resent the fraud that has 
been practised on them, and will be stung, by the sense of having 
been deceived, into an irrevocable hatred of Imperialism, and of the 
whole system that has made such teaching necessary and congenial 
to itself.— lb. 

“Eight or nine years ago, it would have shocked, we believe, 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


583 


such men as M. Duruy himself, to have had to screw all modern 
history round so as to glorify the author of the coup d'etat and the 
cause of so many innocent men dying in misery at Cayenne. But 
time has reconciled them to what has happened, and the daily 
influence of the Empire, and the spectacle of its power and prestige, 
have altered the ways of thinking of many men, who have no very 
strong moral feelings, and who have learnt gradually to look on 
France as the Emperor looks on it .—Saturday Review. 

“ It would be difficult to administer an official reproof to the pro¬ 
fessor of a lyceum, who stated to his hearers, that Louis-Philippe 
gave up his throne, because he would not be guilty of shedding 
French blood. No fact of history is more indisputable, and none 
seems more simple, and yet it is a fact that the authors of the coup 
d'etat would wish the young should never know. But the Imperial 
Government knows that, so long as it is powerful, it may rely impli¬ 
citly on the subservience of the teachers it selects. There will be no 
dangerous acknowledgments of the virtues of the Bourbons, or of the 
popular enthusiasm they once awakened.”— Tb. 

It is consolatory to see, that the illustrious opponents of the 
Bourbon dynasty are at last paying a tardy homage to the principles 
which predominated during the restoration, and which were ill- 
exchanged for the present unhappy and unhallowed era of 
despotism, dissoluteness, and duplicity. No wonder that the Man 
of December wishes to extinguish the memory of their good deeds, 
and annihilate, if it were possible, the very name of their august 
and amiable representative— 

Son nom serait suspect a mon autorite ; 

II est du sang Frangais rejeton legitime ; ^ 

On sait son droit au trone, et ce droit est un crime. 

Voltaire. 

The Italian and Spanish branches have honourably adhered to the 
principles of attachment and amity which unite them with the ex¬ 
alted, though exiled head of their illustrious house. The King of 
Naples, in the crisis of his calamity, declined, with dignified consist¬ 
ency, to accept the asylum proffered to him by the Man of Decem¬ 
ber, on the ground, that no sympathy could exist between the Bona- 
partes and the Bourbons. 

The Queen of Spain could not forbid the occupant of the French 


584 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE -BONAPARTES ? 


throne to cross over to a frontier town, and be received with the marks 
of respect to which any acknowledged sovereign is entitled; but Her 
Majesty could not be prevailed on to reciprocate the visit. 

“ What was desired is that Queen Isabella should profit by their 
Majesties’ sojourn so near her territory to visit them. Hitherto the 
Queen has been obstinate on this head; all argument, all entreaty was 
useless , when she teas in the province of Santander not long ago , in indu¬ 
cing her to visit the Emperor , who was then expected at Biarritz . The 
fact is, Queen Isabella, with or without reason, never had much 
liking for the Montijo family; and, such as it was, with time, it has, 
I fear, diminished. Her Majesty is as intensely Spanish as her 
father was.”— Times. 

“It is to be feared, also, that the great qualities of the Emperor 
have not quite removed the exaggerated prejudices which a Spanish 
Bourbon may cherish against the name of Bonaparte.”— Ih. 

She could no more shut the gates of Madrid against the Empress, 
than Celimene could refuse to receive Arsinoe. 

Celimene. 

. . . ah quel heureux sort en ce lieu vous nmene ? 

Madame, sans mentir, j’^tais de vous en peine. 

Arsinoe. 

Je viens pour quelqu’ avis, que j’ai cm vous devoir. 

Celimene. 

Ah ! Mon Dieu! que je suis contente de vous voir! 

* * * * 

Autant qu’il vous plaira, vous pouvez arreter, 

Madame, et la dessus, rien ne doit vofis hater. 

Moliere. 

r 

The Spanish Queen, I firmly believe, will rejoice to see the day, 
when her royal cousin having been invited by all loyal and liberal 
Frenchmen to resume his ancestral throne, will exclaim with grate¬ 
ful and cordial emotion— 

Je veux que tous les cceurs soient heureux de ma joie. 

Voltaire. 

It is a very poor indemnity for France, that, by incurring an 
enormous and increasing debt, a profuse expenditure and a relent¬ 
less conscription, she has enabled the grandson of an obscure 
Corsican to “seek in his heart to give himself unto wine . . . , . 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TllE BONAPARTES ? 


585 


to make him great works, to build him houses and plant him vine¬ 
yards, and make him gardens and orchards .... and have great 
possessions above all that were before him; to gather him also 
silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the 
provinces, and get him men singers and women singers, and the 
delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all 
sorts ; and not keep from his eyes whatsoever they desire, and not 
withhold his heart from any joy” (Eccl. ii. 3). 

Even the Potentates and Princes of G ermany seem to be awakening 
from their dreamy and dangerous supineness, and to be participating 
in the feelings of distrust and dislike, with which their honest and 
intelligent subjects have long been regarding their insatiable 
and insidious neighbour. Austria, which “meanly surrendered the 
Imperial Crown in 1806 {Times), has somewhat tardily and tamely 
taken the lead at this crisis ; but her infatuated rival monarch, who 
ought to have been her most influential coadjutor, would (it is to 
feared) rather enter into a league with the enemy of German inde¬ 
pendence, to crush his own loyal, though liberal subjects, than 
heartily join with his brother sovereigns in preparing to resist the 
machinations of their common enemy.” 

“ The King of Prussia treats a Parliament as a child treats a toy, 
he only gets it that he may smash it. He seems to like a crash—to 
raise his house of cards, and then by a puff of his breath level it. 
How long is this to go on?”— Times. 

“Every week makes the gulf between the King and Iris people 
wider and wider, and in all likelihood we shall soon know whether 
this gulf will ever be bridged over .”—Saturday Review . 

“His position is as dangerous, as hollow, and as thoroughly 
undermined as was ever occupied by one of those weak, credulous, 
and yet arbitrary Sovereigns whose stories are the landmarks of 
history.”— II. 

“The ordinances against the press have been repeatedly and 
brutally carried out, to the extent, in one recent case, of seizing on 
the same day every newspaper published in Berlin.”— II. 

“Not a single man of sound judgment and independent character 
is admitted to his councils, the chief place in which is occupied 
(unseen, but not unknown by the public) by a Prince of the blood, 
at whose very name a cry of execration rings throughout Prussia.” 
-— Scotsman. 


586 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“ None but a man of the narrowest judgment could think that 
the best way to gain or to fortify the attachment of a people to any 
cause was to dragoon them into it; to win the sympathy of the press, 
to trample upon it; and to secure the honest co-operation of subor¬ 
dinates, to bully them.”— Times. 

i ( At a moment when the immediate future of Europe is enveloped 
in uncertainty and even in gloom, one beholds in Prussia divided 
councils and general discontent, a detested Ministry, an unpopular 
King, a Parliamentary Opposition most violently embittered, a 
general sentiment of profound irritation throughout the whole 
country. At what a disadvantage does not Prussia thus drift on to¬ 
wards the chances of a European war in spring.”— lb. 

“ There can now be little doubt that the next Chamber of Deputies 
will be made up of men more intense in their Liberalism, and more 
resolute in tlieir opposition to Government, than those who provoked 
a dissolution by their independence of spirit in the summer.”— Bell. 

“Anew Chamber will meet, more jealous of the power of the 
purse, more jealous of standing armies and a soldiering King, than 
that with which M. Bismark quarrelled.”— lb. 

“Everywhere the Fortschritt is in the ascendant, and uncompro¬ 
mising opposition is shown to the moderate Liberals. It is pretty 
certain that the Chamber will not gain in respectability by the new 
elections. As for the next Assembly being found more tractable 
than the last, that is not for a moment to be anticipated.”— Times. 

“ He may trace in individuals the advance that public feeling has 
made in a democratic direction.” 

“ There is now an opportunity for this misguided but honest and 
patriotic Sovereign to retire from the unhappy position he has taken, 
to rid himself of bad advisers, and to regain the affections of his 
people.”— lb. 

It is, however, gratifying to learn (1) that Russia is as friendly to 
the project of improving the German constitution, as the Man of 
December is averse to it; (2)—that the German rulers are prepared, 
if needs be, to co-operate in defending the integrity of Prussia itself, 
in spite of the rebuffs and remonstrances, with which their invita¬ 
tions and entreaties have been so ungraciously received, or rather, 
so peremptorily rejected. 

“ As regards German affairs, Russia sympathises with the union of 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


587 


the strength of Germany, based on the interests of all the States of 
which that country is composed. Russia has no more reason to 
provide against the dangers which might result to her from Germany, 
than Germany has to put herself on her guard against coming 
dangers from Russia.”— Times. 

“The Emperor of the French, I am informed on good authority, 
is personally mortified exceedingly at the Frankfort gathering. For 
a long time past he has been doing all ho can to gain the good-will 
of Austria—he has even gone the extraordinary length of making an 
Archduke Emperor-elect of Mexico:* and yet the Emperor of Austria 
takes the lead in a measure which is manifestly directed against him 
and his designs—nay, more, his Austrian Majesty has done this not 
only without consulting him, but without deigning to give him the 
slightest intimation of the project. Where he thought personal 
friendship existed, he finds profound distrust; where he thought a 
political alliance accomplished, lie encounters political hostility. He 
is humiliated as a man, and baffled as a statesman.”— Presse. 

t( Since the German Princes have been here, the French Government 
has repeatedly expressed approval of the move made by Austria, but 
I learn from Baden, that the King of Prussia and his Ministers have 
recently received from Paris similar assurances of sympathy. May 
it not be that the Emperor Napoleon looks with a jealous eye on the 
rapprochement between England and Austria, and therefore deems it 
advisable to be on a decent footing with Prussia?”— Ih . 

( ‘ The King of Prussia himself, who is more exposed than any 
other German Prince to the encroachments of French ambition, 
may count on the unanimous assistance of his Confederates against 
foreign invasion. It is not surprising that the politicians of Paris 
should be annoyed by the efforts of the greatest nation on the Con¬ 
tinent to become also the strongest. The aspirations of Germany 
are reproved as if they involved revolutionary innovation, and the 
good will with which Englishmen regard the experiment adds one 
more to the accumulated proofs of insular perfidy.”— Daily News. 

“ Of all German States none is so exposed to invasion as Prussia; 
the invader that already casts his shadow upon the Rhine , would he the 

* The recent aspect of Mexican matters is discouraging as to the Archduke’s 
acceptance, and seems intended, as well as calculated to develop what was pro¬ 
bably the real object of the Man of December from the outset of the expe¬ 
dition. * 


588 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


strongest and least scrupulous power in Europe, and the danger is never far 
off. Singlehanded she must succumb, and her only chance of safety 
is in being a member of a powerful German Confederation, pledged 
not for aggression but for mutual defence. With instinctive acute¬ 
ness the Paris journals already disparage the good work on which 
the Princes are engaged, for they feel that a truly united Germany 
would be something more than a mere check on France.”— Presse. 

“1 fear, from what I learn, that the elected Emperor Maximilian 
has already began to experience some uneasiness and doubts about the pos¬ 
sibility of founding the Empire , and forming a working Government. 
The financial question is, I am assured, causing a somewhat unsatis¬ 
factory correspondence between the Archduke and the French 
Government. There is no difficulty about the military arrange¬ 
ments ; but those who know Mexico, and have been called by Maxi¬ 
milian to give him information, are reported to have declared that, 
in order to ensure a governing success, a foreign force and considerable 
funds are necessary at starting. Now, how is this money to be ob¬ 
tained, if France will not guarantee a loan ? The Archduke has 
been told that he must not expect any money from England, where 
financiers do not hold a high opinion of Mexican integrity. France 
will not guarantee the loan, that is certain. Thus a great difficulty 
arises the very day after the acceptance of the throne. The Mexican 
envoys, of course, have painted a glowing picture to the Austrian 
prince. On the map, the empire looks a broad and naturally rich 
land; but those who know the country tell the Archduke a number of 
unpleasant truths about the people, ) their character, their habits, the 
difficulty of imposing and collecting an increased taxation, and other 
prosaic observations.”— Conservative Paper. 

“The Austrian Archduke is said to require more guarantees than 
the French Government is disposed to accord.” 

“ Mexicans were particularly dull in the advanced hours, on un¬ 
favourable rumours from Paris respecting the loan.”— Times. 

“The Paris papers of to-day publish a telegram from Nazaire 
with intelligence from Vera Cruz, stating that, according to news 
received from the interior of Mexico, a numerous party exists favour¬ 
able to the annexation, pure and simple, of Mexico to France .”— lb. 

“The Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian has resolved to go to 
Mexico, if the majority of the inhabitants of that country will 
consent to accept him as their Sovereign, and matters have been so 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


589 


skilfully managed by Marshal Forey , that they are likely to do so. 
The relations between the Emperor Napoleon and the Archduke are 
extremely intimate, and it is said that the former has promised his 
enterprising protege, to leave 5,000 French troops for a certain number of 
years at Acapulco , and some other place on the west coast of Mexico. 
The Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian is a goodnatured man, and 
clever withal, but he is so ambitious and vain that he is not a favourite 
here. For some years his Imperial Highness has had very little 
personal communication with his brother, the Emperor, and the 
public attribute his Imperial Highness’s rare appearance at his 
Court to family dissensions.” —Daily Mews. 

The following extracts were printed in 1860, as indicating the 
feelings at that time entertained by all enlightened and high-minded 
Germans towards the nephew of the ruthless invader, by whom their 
country had been insulted and impoverished :—* 

“ The Emperor of the French profited nothing by his journey to 
Baden, and must have returned to Paris with the conviction, that 
he should not be able to acquire any part of the German territory 
on the left bank of the Pliine without doing battle for it. The 
Bavarian and Prussian writers for the press, express their satisfac¬ 
tion that there were no traitors in the German camp at Baden, and 
their delight that the Emperor of the French was so much vexed to 
find that this was the case.”— Times. 

“The Emperor left for Strasburg at 10 p.m., and his train started 
in the midst of a silence more profound than I had ever remarked before. 
Standing on the edge of the crowd, I was astonished to the utmost 
at a stillness, like that of death—a quiet which was not broken until 
the cause of it had departed; then every man breathed freely; 
and as the Grand Duke of Baden rode back to his castle, the people 
gave him loyal cheers, which contrasted with the gloomy silence 

* “ The contemplated celebration of the 50th anniversary of the battle of Leipsic 
announced by a circular from the municipal bodies of Berlin and Leipsic to 107 
German towns, is taken amiss by a part of the French press, which deprecates such 
celebrations, as calculated to revive irritating recollections, and which ren ' Is the 
Germans, that, for every festival of the kind kept beyond the Bhine on account of 
triumphs gained over the armies of the first Napoleon, not one, hut many, might on 
this side he held.”— Times. 

But his victories were invariably the results of selfish and sinister aggressions. 



590 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


with which the Gallic clespot had been greeted. To my mind there 

WAS SOMETHING TRULY DIGNIFIED IN THIS NOISELESS CENSURE. To 

hiss, might be but a display of wanton impertinence—but to re 

STRONGLY SILENT WAS THE NOBLE REBUKE OF RESOLUTE MINDS. I 

ought to have said that on Saturday there was a fine illumination 
at the Conversation House, which is the grand resort of the company 
staying in the neighbourhood, and the building in which is concen¬ 
trated the gambling for which the town is famous. Beyond this one 
display, I did not perceive a flag or a light upon any house or hotel. 
This was very strange to me; for if, in any English town, there had 
been but one King, much less nine, there would have been some sort 
of display, unless, indeed, the unpopularity of one of the number 

HAD BEEN GREAT ENOUGH TO COMPEL THE PEOPLE TO IGNORE THE EXIST¬ 
ENCE OF THE OTHER EIGHT.”— SpUVgeon. 

“When the Emperor came forth from the hotel to his carriage, 
the populace of Baden gave him umnistakeable evidence of their 
feelings towards him. Several gentlemen have assured me that 
the hissing was very far in excess of the few notes of acclama¬ 
tion. Even in the Conversation House, where the elite of the 
visitors were assembled, the hisses were very distinct, and must 
have been an unpleasant sound to one who breathes the air of 
flattery, and eats the bread of adulation. When the Grand Duke 
afterwards appeared, the people cheered him very heartily, as if to 
show for whom the sounds of disapproval had been intended.”—(. lb .) 

“ After all, it is not, as far as I can judge, what he has done, but 
what he may do, which causes this ill-feeling towards him. Some 
men would have done less, and have had more credit for it; but this 
man continues to mar all his good deeds (? ?) by a crooked policy, 
which leads most men to suspect his best actions, and to impute to 
him dangers which may be very far from his thoughts (? ?). Worse 
men than he have been better liked—and yet there is no injustice; 

for HIS CONDUCT COURTS SUSPICION, AND HIS DARK RESERVE CREATES 
DISTRUST.”— lb. 

‘ ‘ If the people of Kehl received the Emperor heartily, they were 
the only Germans who would have done so; for everywhere 

THROUGHOUT BELGIUM, PRUSSIA, AND THE SMALL GERMAN STATES, HE 

is either dreaded or execrated. It is the universal belief, that 
he will never be content until he has completed the 4 natural 
boundary ’ scheme, by subduing all the territory on the west of the 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


591 


Rhine to his Imperial sway. If the English are no friends to Napo¬ 
leon, the Germans go even further, and are more anti-imperial than 
ourselves. ’ ’— Spurgeon. 

The following is a specimen of the insidious and insulting para¬ 
graphs, which, at that time (1860) emanated from the Imperial 
press; and which, after the recent proceedings at Frankfort, ought 
to be seriously pondered by Germany, or rather by Europe:— 

“ The Germans imagine that, forthwith, and without any cause, 
France will declare war, and march to the Rhine. We can certify to 
them, that nobody in this country ever thinks of such a thing, and 
that no Government could propose it seriously. But if the Germans 

THEMSELVES SHOULD THINK PROPER TO MODIFY THEIR ANCIENT POLITICAL 
CONSTITUTION, AND SUBSTITUTE FOR THE IMPOTENT CONFEDERATION A 
SINGLE, STRONG CENTRALISED GOVERNMENT, WE WOULD NOT ANSWER 

that France would not think it reasonable to demand of Ger¬ 
many COMPENSATIONS AND SECURITIES.” 

On what ground, or with what justice? Has Germany received 
any indemnity for the annexation to France of Nice and Savoy, or for 
the substitution of the Empire for the Republic?* 

Although the recent convention of the German Sovereigns is an 
event which tends to encourage the friends of national stability and 
independence, I must confess, that I contemplate the tenour and 
tendency of its proceedings with involuntary emotions of dissatisfac¬ 
tion and disappointment. It would have been gratifying to have 
seen a more complete oblivion of all past janglings and jealousies—a 
more fixed resolution to concur in defending the entire territories of 
the greater potentates, whether situated within the proper limits of 
Germany or not, against all foreign aggression ; by which declara¬ 
tion they might have controlled the desires and checked the designs 
of their restless and reckless adversary. In short, it would have 
been well for their own peace and security if it could have been said 
of them as of the primitive believers, that they “were of one heart 
and of one soul; neither said any of them that aught of the things 


* France, by her conduct in respect of Nice and Savoy, and more recently in 
Mexico, had lost the moral respect of liberal Europe . She was known to sigh for 
the Rhine, and her wishes for Poland were supposed to be connected with this 
object.— Mr. Lefevre , F aimerstonian M.P. 


592 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


which he possessed was-his own, but they had all things common 
common interests, common aspirations, common fears, common 
hopes, common allies, common enemies. Their number was fear¬ 
fully abridged during the unprincipled rule of the Man of Brumaire : 
11 Tant il en avait mis dedans la sepulture ” (La Fontaine) of extinction 
or of mediation, and all are now similarly endangered by the Man of 
December’s immeasurable and insensate ambition. His projects of 
territorial exchanges and adjustments have often been indirectly 
detailed and developed by the hireling organs of the Bonapartist 
press, but have never until now been openly denounced and dis¬ 
countenanced by the parties intended to be his victims; nor can 
they indeed be said to have been formally reprehended or repudiated 
at the Frankfort meeting, when 

Le demeurant des rats tint chapitre en un coin 
Sur la necessity presente. 

There is not, in this case, any necessity to 

Attacher un grelot au cou de Rodilard. 

A menacing pamphlet or paragraph announces his intentions with 
sufficient clearness; and Francis Joseph would, I think, have acted 
wisely if he had proposed that, as soon as any aggressive manifesto 
was issued by the French ruler, he should be called upon to give an 
explanation— 

Qu’ ainsi, quand il irait en guerre, 

De sa marclie avertis, ils defendraient leur terre. 

But even if 

Chacun fut de l’avis de M. le Doyen— 

I fear that, when it came to the point, he himself would be unwil¬ 
ling to take, and the others to follow, the lead. 

L'un dit, je n’y vais point; je ne suis pas si sot— 

L’autre, je ne saurais. Si Lien, (pic sans rien faire, 

On se quitta—j’ai maints chapitres yus, 

Q,ui pour neant se sont anisi tenus. 

* * * * 

Ne faut il que deliberer, 

La cour en conseillers foisonne— 

Est il besoin d’executer, 

L’on ne rencontre plus personno. 


La Fontaine. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 593 

It is a sad and sickening reflection, that the Germans are more in 
earnest about coercing Denmark than intent upon preparing to resist 
the machinations of their astute and ambitious neighbour.* 

“Austria is on the point of enforcing what is called ‘Federal 
execution ’ in Holstein.”— Times. 

11 It would seem that if the Germans could get their country into 
a mess they would. The long perspective through which their Pro- 
fessor-led minds regard all practical questions magnifies molehills 
into mountains, and diminishes mountains into molehills.”— Times. 

11 They must know very well, that military difficulties would be the 
least they would have to encounter. A very short time, and a much 
slighter pretext would be sufficient to raise all sorts of political 
dangers. They cannot suppose that their dreaded neighbour on the 
other side of the Pliine would confine his interference to the boun¬ 
daries of Denmark; and there is no saying where the consequences 
of this 1 execution ’ might land us.”— lb. 

“It seems inconceivable, that Germany—urged by every interest 
of her own to maintain the peace of Europe, having nothing to lose 
and nothing to gain by war, possessing a clumsy and antiquated 
organisation, very ill calculated for defence, and still more unsuited 
for attack—should, to the grief and embarrassment of her real 
friends and well-wishers, and the secret joy of all who, from the 
antipathies of race, or the demands of an aggressive policy, are her 
enemies, destroy her rising prosperity, blight her prospects of liberty, 
and deliberately kindle the torch of a war of which her soil would 
be the theatre, and her people the victims, in order to gratify certain 
sentimental sympathies, and to give effect to some imaginary affini¬ 
ties.”—/^ 

It was rumoured, about three years ago, that a second interview 
was in contemplation between the Emperor Francis Joseph and the 

* “ Lord Russell has suggested as many Constitutions as the Abbe Sieyes, and 
with about as much practical result. He has evidently laboured honestly to do 
justice between the contending parties, and to bring about some tenable solution; 
but he has not given satisfaction to anybody, nor brought things nearer to a 
settlement , and he has got entangled in the cobwebs of all kinds of little constitutional 
subtleties. A few months before he affronted the Danes by his despatch of last autumn , 
he had proposed addressing a set of questions to Prussia, which France and, Russia 
implored him to keep back as needlessly irritating to the German PoiursF—>Saturday 
Review. 


P P 


594 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Man of December. The following passage, much abridged 
slightly altered, from Itacine, was at that time printed as a kind 
Programme for this interesting occasion. 

Louis Napoleon. 

Jo ne viens point, arm! d’un indigne artifice, 

D’un voile d’equite couvrir mon injustice— 

II suffit quo mon coour me condamne tout bas, 

Et je soutiendrais mal ce que je ne crois pas. 

Dans le premier elan de mon ardeur nouvelle, 

Je voulus m’obstiner a vous etre fidele— 

Mais Florence et Victor coururent a l’autel 
Malgre moi se jurer un amour immortel. 

Apres cela, Seigneur, eclatez contre un traitre 
Qui Test avec douleur, et qui pourtant veut l’etre— 

Pour moi, loin de contraindre un si juste courrouxj 
II me soulagera peut etre autant que vous— 

Donnez moi tous les noms destines aux parjures, 

Je crains votre silence, et non pas vos injures— 

Et mon coeur soulevant mille secrets temoins, 

M’en dira d’autant plus, que vous m’en direz moins. 

Francis Joseph. 

Seigneur, dans cet aveu depouille d’artifice, 

J’aime a voir, que du moins vous vous rendiez justice— 

Et que, voulant bien rompre un nceud si solennel, 

Vous vous abandonniez au crime en criminel. 

Est il juste, aprez tout, qu’un conquerant s’abaisse 
Sous la servile loi de garder sa promesse ? 

Non, non ; la perfidie a de quoi vous tenter, 

Et vous ne me cherchiez que pour vous en vanter. 

Quoi ? sans que ni sermcnt ni devoir vous retienne, 

Teupler de senateurs les marais de Cayenne ? 

Vos forfaits sont d’un coeur toujours maitre de soi— 

D’un heros, qui n’est point esclave de sa foi— 

Tous les Francois bient6t s’enhardiront peutetre 
De vous donner le nom de parjure et de traitre— 

Et sans cbercber ailleurs des titres empruntes, 

Ne vous sufiit-il pas de ceux que vous portez ? 

Louis Napoleon. 

Nos cceurs n’€taient point faits dependans l’un de 1’autre— 

Je suis mon interet, sans songer trop au votre— 

Lien ne vous engageait a m’aimer en effet. 

Andromaque, 


OUGHT FBANCE TO WOESHir TIIE BONAPABTES ? 


595 


Whilst lamenting the atrocities, of which unhappy Poland is the 
theatre, it is, I think, obvious, that their continuance is mainly owing 
to the feeble and futile interposition of officious powers, who are 
determined to run no risk, and to incur no responsibility. 

“Russian diplomacy continues to proclaim its conviction that 
external countenance alone keeps up the revolt.”— Conservative 
Paper. 

The conduct of the British Cabinet has been most iniquitous and 
ill-advised. They have irritated Russia, without benefiting Poland, 
and have excited hopes (which were never intended to be realised), 
by their blundering and blustering menaces and expostulations. 

“ Our position with regard to Poland is not so particularly brilliant 
that any one would go out of his way to draw attention to it.”— 
Times. 

“Poland ivill have reason to lament that England ever mixed herself up 
with her affairs at all , or ever addressed a note or despatch to Russia; for 
that intervention has only brought upon the people the additional calamity 
of the Mouravieffs and the Bergs. The moro distasteful to Prince 
Grortschakoff the despatches of Lord Russell, the more the Russian 
Government will throw off all restraint, and the more resolutely will 
they proceed in their work of extermination. Before the diplomatic 
intervention of the three Powers a compromise of some kind between 
the Russians and Poles was possible, perhaps not difficult; but 
since that intervention, and in consequence of it, there is now no 
room for compromise—the Russians are as determined to extermi¬ 
nate as the Poles are to be exterminated, but never to submit.”— lb. 

“Russia has lost everything that makes the possession of a 
territory an advantage. The army it is obliged to keep up must 
absorb more than the revenue of the kingdom. Commerce, agricul¬ 
ture, every kind of enterprise is perishing. It would be an incal¬ 
culable gain to Russia if she abandoned the kingdom of Poland to 
itself; to govern it, even by the sword, against the hostility of the 
whole population, is impossible.”— lb. 

“If the Western Powers do not, under any circumstances, intend 
to go further than protesting, if they are resolved not to interfere by 
force of arms, they are bound to let the Poles know their determina¬ 
tion at once.”— Times. 

“We would not go to war for a wrongful 

v p 2 


cause, nor even 


596 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPAllTES ? 

for a rightful one, unless expediency were joined with right. 
Times. 

“We believe that France and England have decided to make a 
declaration to the effect that they consider the treaties of 1815 as no 
longer in force, and, consequently, have ceased to guarantee the 
possession of Poland to Russia.”— Presse. 

‘ ‘ As far as England was concerned, Prince Gortschakoff had the 
advantage of knowing that a word would not be followed bg a blow , 
and that in his reply he might take just as much latitude as courtesy 
would permit. England had said—‘ This is what you should do, 
and, if you refuse to do it, why, you must let it alone.’ ”— lb. 

“Neither honour nor interest requires armed intervention on 
behalf of Poland.”— Saturday Review. 

In regard to French policy, it depends entirely upon the caprice 
and vacillation of incarnate selfishness and despotism. 

“ The journal in question misunderstands the spirit of our institu¬ 
tions under the present regime . The idea which directs public affairs 
emanates from the Sovereign , and the Minister is only responsible for 
its execution. ’ ’— Moniteur . 

The Man of December may well say, “ L’ etat e’est moi;* la 
presse e’est moi; f la constitution e’est moi; \ la Bourse e’est 

* The semi-official journals express themselves enthusiastically at the manner in 
which the Emperor has filled up the posts vacant by the death of M. Billaut. The 
new men they pronounce to be wonderfully endowed with the very qualities that 
best fit them for their posts ; and they are struck with admiration of the discrimi¬ 
nating mind that made such a choice. Had the Emperor named any other persons , 
the Fanglosscs of the press ivould have said the same. The articles were probably 
penned beforehand , and the names inserted afterwards. 

f “ It is certain that the German papers, the Cologne Gazette and others, are 
constantly stopped in the post and not delivered in Paris. Considering how few 
Frenchmen read them, this seems petty, and scarcely worth while." — Times. 

f “ It is feared, that the verification of powers will give rise to stormy discussions, 
as a great number of protests have been entered against the return of the Ministerial 
candidates .”— lb. 

“Those who have gained their seats as a tribute to their independence and 
courage will not fail to lay before France some account of the gross violation of 
electoral law by which the number of the Parliamentary opponents of the Govern¬ 
ment are carefully limited.”— Saturday Review. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


597 


moi; * l’armee c’est moi; ” and France is so trammeled and terrified 
that her master’s fiat can neither be impeached nor impeded. It 
seems that Russia is beginning to perceive the necessity of placing no 
confidence in the common enemy of all independence and nationality, 
just as all other Governments, which are unhappily situated in the 
vicinity of down-trodden and degraded France, must, ere long, an¬ 
nounce upon the frontier, 11 no connection with next door.” 

“ The Bourse has been flat in consequence of the publication by 
the Moniteur of the late despatch from the National Government of 
Poland to Prince Czartoryski.”— Times. 

“France will not allow herself to be hurried away by British 
rhodomontade, or held back by Austrian hesitation.”— French Taper. 

11 Content with our repulse Russia does not seek to aggravate it 

* “ The Paris stock-market is so nervously sensitive as to be affected by shadows.” 
—Saturday Review. 

The Paris advices state that the new French Loan, which is expected shortly to 
be introduced, k likely to be for about 16,000,000^. 

Louis Napoleon (to Fould). 

How goes the world, that I am thus encounter’d 
With clamorous demands of broken bonds, 

And the detention of long since due debts, 

Against my honour ? 

Put on a most importunate aspect, 

A visage of demand. 

Foui/n. 

At many times I brought in my accounts, 

Laid them before you, shook my head, and wept— 

Yea, ’gainst the authority of manners, pray’d you 
To hold your hand more close. I did endure, 

Not seldom, nor no slight checks, when I have 
Prompted you, in the ebb of your estate, 

And your great flow of debts, and what remains 
Will hardly stop the mouths of present dues. 

The future comes apace. So the gods bless me, 

When all our offices have been oppress’d 

With riotous feeders, and when every room 

Hath blazed with lights, and bray’d with minstrelsy, 

I have retir’d, and set mine eyes to flow. 

Louis Napoleon. 


Come, sermon me no more. 


598 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


by any additional humiliation. It is different with regard to France. 
‘Toleration of the plans of the Revolution,’ says the Russian 
Minister, ‘is only to be feared from those Powers which may be 
determined to pursue, under an appearance of diplomatic action 
within the limits of international engagements, the realisation of the 
most extreme desires of the Polish Revolution and the subversion of 
the European equilibrium.’ This evidently cannot be expected from 
the Cabinets which are interested in maintaining that equilibrium, 
and which have taken as the basis of that intervention the scrupulous 
execution of the treaties of 1815. No one can doubt against whom 
these sarcasms are levelled. France is taunted with her incon¬ 
sistency in denouncing the treaty of 1815, as framed in a spirit 
incompatible with her dignity and her interest; while she is at the 
same time pressing upon Russia, in behalf of Poland, the execution 
of that very treaty. Read by the light of previous despatches , it is 
equally impossible to doubt that France is pointed at in these sentences as 
the promoter of revolution and a destroyer of European equilibrium. 
Such language is no longer the language of defence or exculpation; 
it lias in it a tone of menace, almost of challenge.”— Times. 

“ That narrow but fervent spirit of patriotism which has reconciled 
the Russian nation to so many sacrifices and so many miseries is 
once more aroused, and projects of social, political, and economical 
reform are willingly postponed by the people to a desire to try 
conclusions once more with the power of Imperial France.”— 
lb. 

“ The leaders of the insurrection in Poland have openly and con¬ 
temptuously repudiated any terms short of national independence. 
They demand the restoration of Poland as it was immediately before 
the first partition, and they call upon Europe to forget equally the 
previous and the subsequent history of their unhappy country. 
Opinions may differ among foreigners as to the reasonableness of 
these claims, but it is certain that they are fated to any negotiations 
with Russia, By insisting upon terms which no Czar, however 
enlightened, would grant spontaneously, and which are higher than 
Poland can possibly hope to extort from Russia by her own strength, 
the revolutionary Government virtually avows its reliance on foreiejn inter¬ 
vention. — lb. 

“The French Foreign Minister is said to have, immediately on 
receiving Prince? Oortschakoff’s last note, ordered the French Am- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


599 


bassador at Vienna to insist that, Austria having taken the initiative 
in the proposal of the six points to Eussia, it devolved on the same 
power to demand of Eussia formal adhesion to those points, and an 
immediate commencement to carry them into effect. It is added that 
the French Ambassador hinted that France attached so much im¬ 
portance to this initiative on the part of Austria, that 1 he would not 
answer for the consequences of refusal, even from a point of view 
affecting the Austrian possessions in Italy.’ Surprise and dissatifac- 
tion at this unlooked-for and unwelcome demand is attributed to the 
Emperor Francis-Joseph and Count Eechberg—and no wonder, if 
the facts are as stated. The narration is somewhat too circumstantial 
to be taken as quite mythical; but it is so singular, and, without 
some further declaration of intentions, so discreditable to France , that 
it is almost impossible to receive it with anything like entire cre¬ 
dence.’ ’— Scotsman. 

As soon as any neighbouring power raises the voice of remon¬ 
strance or resentment, the imperious arbiter of crouching Europe’s 
destinies wid say— 

Quoi ? ces gens se moqueront de moi ? 

Eux seuls seront exempts de la commune loi ? 

La Fontaine. 

How deplorable, I repeat, is the condition of Prussia at this 
important crisis! * 

“ A country, which affects to have a right to assist in determining 
the fortunes of Europe, but is never able to have any opinion or take 
any line of its own—a Power which truckles to Eussia and bows 
humbly to France.”— Saturday Review. 

* Two Kings of Prussia have successively exhibited humiliating examples of 
imbecility and infatuation (par nohile fratrum). 

The first (Frederick William IV.) is thus described by Mr. Kinglake 

“ In the nature and temperament of the King of Prussia there was so much of 
weakness, that his Imperial brother-in-law was accustomed to speak of him in terms 
of ruthless disdain—and it seems, that this habit of looking down upon the King, 
caused the Czar to shape his policy simply as though Prussia was null” (I. 479). 
« The temperament and mental quality of the Prussian monarch must be reckoned 
among the causes of the war” {lb). Such a monarch had not the courage or the 
wisdom to take part against the restoration of Bonapartism, which had proved such 
a curse and calamity to Prussia, until “ Sovereigns who banded for the most just 
and holy of causes—that of asserting national independence—overthrew the in¬ 
tolerable despotism of Napoleon.”— Times. 


GOO 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TIIE BONAPARTES ? 


King William prefers the example of despotic Imperialism to the 
entreaties of Constitutional loyalty and love— 

Der Eeclite sprengt, besorgt heran, 

Und warnt den Grafen sanft und gut; 

Dock bass hetzt ihn der linke Mann, 

Zu schadenfrohem Frevelmuth— 

IJnd wehe! Trotz des Eechten warnen, 

Lasst er yom Linken sich urn garnen ! 

Burger. 

“Those who have gained their seats as a tribute to their inde¬ 
dependence and coinage will not fail to lay before France some 
account of the gross violations of electoral law by which the number 
of the Parliamentary opponents of the Government are carefully 
limited. ”— Saturday Review. 

“Will such a tempting opportunity to realise old schemes of 
ambition be neglected by the French Puler and his army ? When 
Prussia is caught in the flagrant crime of hunting down the Poles, 
in whose behalf all European States, great and small, have protested 
-—when she stands without a friend in the world except her distant 
and powerless tempter, what likelihood is there that France will forbear 
from making her pay the cost of any campaign on which the Emperor may 
decide ? ”— Times. 

“ Is it not probable that the Emperor Francis-Joseph is so desirous 
to bring about a speedy reform of the Bund, because he wishes to 
emancipate Austria, and with her Europe, from the trammels of a 
certain great and highly aggressive Power?” 

“ The Marquis Wielopolski is known to entertain a great admira¬ 
tion for Napoleon III.—not perhaps for his system, but for the 
manner in which he has maintained it. Nothing is more probable 
than that when the Marquis determined to execute the conscription 
by designation, he was thinking of the French Emperor and of what 
that Sovereign would do under similar circumstances; at all events, 
those of the Marquis Wielopolski’s former friends, who still seek on 
occasions to justify or explain away the one crime of his political life, 
do so by asking whether , after all , a measure of forced recruitment , which 
would have taken away those subjected to it from their homes for a few 
years , can be compared for cruelty to the wholesale system of 

1 DEPORTATIONS ’ TO LAMBESSA AND CAYENNE PUT IN FORCE BY THE 

Third Napoleon after the coup detat ? The Kussian Pogodin, pro- 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE EONAPARTES ? 


601 


posing to ‘ annihilate the Popish element ’ in the Ensso-Polish 
provinces, openly avows that he takes the Emperor of the French as his 
model; and as the latter gives the Italian proprietors of Nice the 
privilege of leaving their birthplace if they do not like the French 
Government established there; so the former wishes that the Polish 
proprietors of Euthenia should be told to consider themselves Eussians 
and stop, or remain Poles and go away.”— Times. 

i 1 A letter from Strasburg, while referring to the rumours to which 
the possibility of a Continental war has given rise on the Ehenisli 
frontier, mentions certain facts which are not without interest at this 
moment. A few weeks ago, it appears, the military intendants of 
the different corps in garrison at Strasbnrg received an order which 
caused some surprise. It proceeded from the Minister of War, and 
directed returns to be made of the effective strength of the divisions, 
as a basis for the supply of the storehouses of the recruiting depots. 
The highest annual effective strength that each depot had had to 
clothe was to be returned, 1 with an increase of one-fifth for the 
infantry and artillery, and of one-third for the cavalry.’ On the 
other hand, no movement has been observed in the arsenals, foundries, 
and other military establishments in that quarter, but these, it seems, 
are all amply supplied. The circular caused a certain uneasiness, 
because some persons remembered, that, when Napoleon I. foresaw 
that the army of Boulogne might have to march upon the Ehine, a 
similar order was sent to the intendants at Strasburg. When a 
campaign is contemplated, a good military administration attends 
first of all to clothes and shoes. It appears that the feeling in the 
German Ehine country is suspicious and unfriendly towards the 
French. It is related that when Marshal M’Mahon paid his visit to 
Strasburg, and a grand review was held there, an invitation to be 
present at the display and festival was sent to the Prussian and 
Baden officers in garrison at Kehl and Eastadt. This was a cus¬ 
tomary politeness, and up to that time had always been cordially 
responded to by the German officers, but on that occasion they 
thought it right to keep away. A few Baden officers were there in 
mufti; none of the Prussians came. On the same day the French 
pontoon-men threw a bridge across the Ehine in presence of the 
Duke of Magenta, who, as soon as it was complete, crossed it with his 
Staff. It had always been the custom, even when a mere inspecting 
general did this, for the Baden garrison to be drawn up on the other 


602 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAFARTES ? 


side to receive liim, the officer in command came to meet him, and 
the two Staffs returned together into France. Marshal M’Mahon, 
it seems, found no such reception. On the German bank there were 
four soldiers, in undress, and an ensign, who positively refused the 
Marshal’s invitation to be present at a banquet which was to take 
place that night. M’Mahon did not set foot on German ground, but 
returned to the French side of the stream. Such are the signs of 
the times on the banks of the Rhine.”— Times. 

The French Ruler’s example is quoted both by Poles and Prussians 
as a precedent for every act which can be taxed with cruelty and 
despotism. 

“I find that whenever any act of tyranny is performed or medi¬ 
tated here the Russians turn naturally to Imperial France, and ask 
what the French Government would have done, or would probably 
do, under similar circumstances.”— Ib. 

“When Napoleon’s troops were fired upon from a house in 
December, 1851, ho did not content himself with arresting the 
inmates and bringing them to trial, they remark; and they are 
now considering whether he did not, in January, 1852, cause 
employers of labour to keep their workshops open so as to prevent 
disaffected artisans from being turned out idle upon the streets.” 
—Ib. 

“Almost every great crime that has been recently committed in 
that unhappy country has found defenders to argue that, after all, 
the same thing has been done and may be done again in Imperial 
France.”— Ib. 

“It appears that the National Government has also adopted a law 
for the press, which, in a spirit of delicate flattery, it has imitated 
from France. The editors of the Polish national journals published 
at Warsaw, if they mistake the policy of the National Government, 
or in any way forget themselves, receive a ‘warning,’ and after two 
warnings their newspaper may be suppressed. Thus, not long since, 
the Prawda (Truth) having stated, as if in justification of its name, 
that the Polish insurrection, unless aided from abroad, must ulti¬ 
mately fail, was warned so severely that it soon afterwards died.” 
—Ib. 

“ The system of press warnings, by the way, is not the only modern 
French idea which, on various pretexts, has been introduced, or 
attempted to be introduced into Poland.”— Ib. 


-OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


603 


“It is a sad spectacle to see a nation thus throwing away-its best 
men in the effort of mere despair. There is an utter helplessness in 
the prospect on every side. The only object for which the Poles 
expect the Western Powers to intervene is one which, it is certain, 
is absolutely unattainable, and even if it could be attained it is very 
doubtful whether matters would be improved.”— Times. 

“ Does it seem now that Pussia is ashamed of her former doings, 
or is likely to become penitent and constitutional under the lecturings 
of Lord Pussell ? Is it not rather plain that the Emperor and his 
Ministers take a pride in showing their disregard for the advice that 
has been forced upon them, and rather rejoice at being able to 
wound the susceptibilities of their troublesome opponents ? ”— 
Scotsman. 

“ England does not intend to go to war for Poland, and least of 
all to join France in such a war, which could only result in her 
being made, as in the Crimea, a catspaw for her aggressive and 
wary ally .”—Morning Herald. 

“Earl Pussell in his efforts to help the Poles, has done them as 
much injury as it was possible for an English statesman to do. His 
despatches to St. Petersburgh, his active exertions to obtain the 
assent of his allies to the presentation of a quasi-ultimatum to 
Pussia, encouraged the insurgents with the hope of European inter¬ 
vention, and stimulated them to carry on the war by immense sacrifices , 
only to find all their hopes disappointed , and see themselves left to 
contend alone with the gigantic resources of Pussia, embittered by 
the prolongation of the struggle and the interference of foreign 
powers.”— lb. 

The military invasion of France, and the moral influence of Britain 
have (as we have already seen) involved Italy in a labyrinth of 
cruelties and confiscations, which (in so far as they are committed or 
connived at by a “Liberal Government”) are in Britain, not only 
palliated, but praised. Even the outrages perpetrated by the 
opposite party, would never have taken place, had not the Man of 
December’s unprovoked and unprincipled attack in 1859, involved 
that unhappy country in all the horrors of civil war, and plunged it 
into financial embarrassments which will probably lead to national 
bankruptcy and ruin. The inhabitants are everywhere paralysed 
and perplexed, by despondency and intimidation, as well as his 
astute and ambiguous policy. 


604 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Puisque vous me voulez tromper, 

Trompez moi mieux que vous ne faites. 

Quinault. 

“I wish my pen, feeble as it is, may serve to draw the attention 
of those who have the power, where I have but the will, to the 
means of obtaining a remedy for the wholesale persecution inflicted 
on thousands of political prisoners in the name of progress.”— Even¬ 
ing Herald. 

“ For the ransom of these prisoners the brigands are carrying on 
a regular and methodical negotiation with their respective friends. 
Among the captives is the son of a M. Gfutzlaff, for whose liberation 
the sum of 2,000 ducats is demanded. The ransoms are all put at 
rather a high figure. Cases have occurred in which the payment of 
such demands has inflicted ruin on a whole family. The threats of 
death to the prisoners, or torture and mutilation, are not empty 
words, for these banditti are more relentlessly savage than the old 
Algerine Corsairs.” 

“At Nocera, between Castellamare and Salerno, a youth was 
carried off last week, and a ransom of 1,000 ducats is demanded. 
Eight brigands visited a small hamlet in the district of Lanciano, in 
the Abruzzi, plundered the houses of two of the principal inhabitants, 
and ordered 2,974 ducats to be ready for payment in eight days, on 
pain of death and destruction of their houses. The villagers were 
sufficient in number to have knocked them all on the head with their 
spades and hatchets, but they were paralysed by fear; the eight 
men, they knew, were but a detachment of a larger band, which 
would wreak terrible vengeance on them in the event of any resist¬ 
ance, and every little point it is impossible to guard with military.” 

“ Eapine, murder, and wholesale arrests are the sole arms Pied¬ 
mont possesses south of the Toronto, and the wrongs of the Poles have 
more than their parallel here.” — -Ih. 

“ Even the Liberal party are so disgusted at the tyranny they are 
subject to, that Piedmont will find her difficulties in the south by no 
means lessened, even if she obtains Pome.”— Ih. 

“ It is uniting every shade of political difference in one unanimous 
protest against the Piedmontese dominion. The refusals of the con¬ 
scription are a good landmark. I know from perfectly reliable 
sources, that there are 4,000 reciutente in the circondario of Palermo 
alone. In one day Gfovone arrested 400 refractory conscripts.”— Ih. 


OTJGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


605 


“ Baron Oosenza lias been tried, and, by aid of the evidence 
obtained by torture from liis soi-disant accomplice, Ottavio Tangretti, 
sentenced to ten years’ of tbe galleys, and Tangretti to five years’ 
seclusion. ”— Evening IleraU. 

11 According to tbe last report of tbe Minister of Finance, tbe army 
of, say in round numbers, 260,000 men costs 196,000,000 francs, 
wbicb is about £30 a year per soldier. In tliis amount must be in¬ 
cluded the allowance of the 100,000 men stationed in Southern Italy , 
winch amounts to about £1,000 a day.” — Times. 

“Patriotism throughout tbe South lies in tbe pocket, and if tbe 
latter be full, tbe former will overflow.”— Ih. 

“Unhappily, the state of Italy is not yet so sure or so tranquil 
that she can dispense with any of that guidance under wbicb she has 
succeeded so far beyond her hopes.” 

“Tbe last act reported of this savage chief, Caruso, is, that last 
week, be entered a house where two famihes resided, consisting each 
of tbe father and mother and two daughters. Tbe men were bound, 
and the women violated before them, after which the whole party 
Were murdered.”— Ih. 

‘ ‘ As the present G-overnment is a little sharper in its practice they 
fly, and at last, reduced to starvation , become brigands to ‘procure the 
means of existence.” — lb. 

“Every one robs and murders in his own interest in many of the 
outlying districts, so that brigandage may be said to be hydra¬ 
headed.”— lb. 

“On the West, a far sight, and iron will, and a strong hand 
wields all the resources of a great military race, and watches for 
the opportunity which it knows how to use. Southward all is 
unsettled , and there is always an occasion to let loose the dogs of war.” 

— Ib. 

“The withdrawal of Sir James Hudson from Turin, is the taking 
away of that which we cannot replace—the sacrifice of a vast amount 
of personal influence highly beneficial to Italy, and exceedingly 
valuable to England.”— Ib. 

“Shortly before his arrival at Turin, the liberties of France were 
overwhelmed by a sudden blow , from which they have never s.nce re¬ 
covered.” — Ib. 

“That he resigns his Mission unwillingly, and this assertion is 
confirmed by the fact, that he does not intend to return to England, 


606 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


but to end liis days amid the scenes which, have been the witnesses 
of his anxieties and successes.”— Times. 

“The notion of a mistake is quite out of the question. The 
Foreign-office authorities could not possibly have forgotten in April, 
1863, their own proposal to Sir James Hudson in August 1862. 
They must have known that twice in two years they had attempted 
to remove him from his position, and could not be ignorant that the 
pressure they had put upon their Minister left him little option but 
to offer his resignation, if he did not wish to be removed by a formal 
act of his superiors.”— lb. 

“ Unless Europe is prepared to go to war for the reconstruction of 
Poland, the sooner she convinces the Poles that they can expect no 
material help the better.”— lb, 

“The Constitutionnel draws an unfaithful picture of the state of 
affairs. Let us not say that Europe protects Poland, when Poland 
succumbs under the blows inflicted by Muscovite barbarity, Austrian 
duplicity, and British egotism.”— Patrie. 

No Bonaparte has any right to cast the first stone at Mouravieff, 
or any other Russian Commander, however cruel and unrelenting. 
His own family have always, when necessary, been at least as savage 
and as stern. 

“Murat issued an ordinance in 1810, which put in force against 
the brigands a code almost as sanguinary as their own. By this 
law it was made death to succour a brigand or one of his family. 
Every person was forbidden, under pain of death, to carry any pro¬ 
visions in the fields. Lists of persons ivere published who xoere to be 
shot down as brigands wherever they could be found. All communication 
with these persons was punished with the one penalty enacted by this law — 
death by military execution. The provisions of this ordinance were rigidly 
enforced. ’ ’—Saturday Review. 

“ Write to General Menou that, whenever a person who has been 
arrested for having spoken against the Government, or tried to 
trouble the public tranquillity, is acquitted by the Tribunals, he 
must again be put into prison, and inform you of it. Let him take 
measures for the arrest of all persons who are in correspondence 'with 
the King of the Island of Sardinia, and cause him to sequestrate the 
property of those who are w T ith the King of the Island of Sardina.” 
—Man of Prumaire to Fouche. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 607 

“You will have a line kingdom. It will be for yon not to go to 
sleep on the throne, but to organise vigorously your finances, so as 
to have a good navy and a good army. You must not lose sight of 
the fact, that force and severe justice are the goodness of Kings. 
You confound too much the goodness of private persons with that of 
Kings. I am waiting to know what quantity of property you have 
confiscated, and the number of the revolted you have dealt upon. 
Shoot three persons in each village, chiefs of the rebels. Do not 
treat priests more tenderly than the others.” —Man of Brumavre to 
Murat. 

The Revue severely criticises the unreflecting credulity that won 
temporary credit for certain reports, and declares such credulity to 
have its origin in the debasement of the public mind in France , due to 
the absence of liberty of the press :— 

“The officious friends of the present regimen found it quite 
natural that the French Government should have the most desultory and 
inconsistent policy , and nobody contradicted them ; they found it quite 
simple that our Government should seek but a pretext to bury the 
Polish question; they found it perfectly logical that our Government 
should make game of its alliances , unceremoniously abandon its friends , 
and offer its arm to those who yesterday were its adversaries. To com¬ 
plete this picture of Tnu sad imbecility of the public mind in 
France, all that was wanted was that the Russian press, disdainfully 
blowing away the illusion, should give to our officious journals a lesson 
of good sense and dignity. And that is what came to pass.” 

“There are scarcely any men of note springing up under the 
Empire. This is only what might have been expected. There is 
no public life in which rising abilities can be trained; there is no 
avenue to civil fame through which the coming men can be made to 
appear.” —Saturday Review. 

“ After any amount of discussion, and the most splendid displays 
of oratory and debating power, the will of the Emperor will still be 
the only source of law.” — Ib> 

“He wishes to disguise the nakedness of despotism under the 
disguise of an appeal to the wisdom of a consultative asseml .ly.”— 

lb. 

“ There was a time in the liistory of all European States when 
they were composed of a number of half independent Dukedoms, 


608 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


Principalities, or Kingdoms, but, in all but Germany, the force and 
vigour .of some leading member of the body has gradually extin¬ 
guished the others and absorbed them into one State. It is only neces¬ 
sary to look through a series of good chronological maps of Europe 
to see the way in which this process has been carried out in France 
and Italy.”— Times. 

“ In each of these countries, ivise and sagacious Sovereigns have taken 
advantage of the tveahiesses or the jealousies of minor States to crush or 
absorb them one bg one , and they have grown into their present har¬ 
monised form out of what seemed at first a fortuitous concourse of 
atoms. Exactly the same opportunities have been offered to Ger¬ 
many.”— lb. 

“There is a slow and patient endurance about the German cha¬ 
racter which has prevented the consolidation of this territory after 
the fashion of more rapid and less scrupulous nations. A German 
is always thinking and never acting, and, what is worse, you cannot 
drive him into action.”— lb. 

According to this view, Ahab was justified in laying hold of 
Naboth’s vineyard, and any powerful monarch is entitled to say— 

angulus file 

Proximus accedat, qui mmc denormat at agellum. 

It is true that England does not, like the Man of December, wish 
to “ alter the map of Europe.”— lb. 

Our former or present crimes are written in characters of blood 
throughout other quarters of the globe—where we have dethroned 
dynasties, burnt palaces, plundered cities, and indulged our in¬ 
satiable thirst for affluence and aggrandisement. We “ commend, 
because they have done wisely,” such unprincipled and unscru¬ 
pulous Kulers as have consolidated their dominions by trampling 
upon the rights of their weaker neighbours; and we scoff and 
sneer at the nations, in which the territorial possessions of the 
defenceless have, to some extent at least, been respected. When 
England, therefore, addresses to [Russia the language of admoni¬ 
tory rebuke, the Emperor might, with perfect propriety, reply 
—“Thou art confident, that thou thyself art a guide to the 
blind, a light of those which are in darkness, an instructor of the 
foolish. . . . Thou, therefore, which teacliest another, teachest thou 


OUGHT FRANCE TO ‘WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


609 


not thyself ? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou 
steal ? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking 
the law, dislionourest thou God ? For the name of God is blasphemed 
among the Gentiles through thee! ! ” (Bom. ii.). 

Can it, I repeat, bo denied that our past and present policy in the 
East is characterised by audacity, avarice, and ambition? We are 
the insolent and insatiable enemies of all who are unable to resist 
us. We take advantage of their weakness to despoil them of their 
wealth; and our rulers at home and abroad have done more to 
hinder the progress of tho Gospel than native hatred and hostility. 

“There is something quite terrible in the unending vista of 
responsibility which we are accepting. England is becoming a sort 
of universal Mayor of the Palace to the monarchs of the Fast. There are 
said to be seven hundred and fifty millions of Asiatics; and England 
at this moment is engaged in ruling, or in actively supporting the 
rulers of nearly four-fifths of this number.”— Saturday Review. 

“We look at the Eastern world solely from one point of view— 
that of traders in search of a settled Government; and if egotism 
means a practical pursuit of what are our private and special ends, 
perhaps we are a little (!!) egotistical.”— lb. 

“In India, we elected ourselves the heirs of the tottering Mogul 
Empire , and gradually broke the resistance and seized the spoils of 
those great lieutenancies which had reduced the splendour of the 
Delhi monarchs to the shadow of a name.”— lb. 

Et partout opprime vous rompez abattus 

Sous les pieds du mechant dont l’audace prospere. 

Gilbert. 

“Who planted slavery as an American institution? The nation 
of England planted it against the remonstrances of a great part of 
the settlors. And why was it so planted ? That the great fortunes 
being made in that trade might not be injured.”— Bishop of Oxford. 

“ Ho had known one of those who were amongst the greatest of 
God’s instruments in carrying the Gospel to tho Hindoos, and he 
said he believed in his conscience that nothing had so much led to 
the disasters in India as the almost universal persuasion, both of the 
Mahommedans and Hindoos, that we were a nation of atheists, and 
worshipped no God. What must our national character be in that 
country, when such an impression could have been stamped upon 

Q Q 


610 OUGHT FRANCE TO 'WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

the Hindoos, that because we had been so fearful of proclaiming the 
name of Christ, they came to the conclusion that we believed in no 
God ? Thanh God this was not so now. Thank God British soldiers 
no longer kept the track open for the car oi Juggernaut; and no 
longer collected tribute for such an accursed idol.” Bishop of Oxfo) d. 

The imperious and intolerable pertinacity with which we have 
compelled the shy and sagacious Japanese to allow diplomatic and 
mercantile intercourse, has justified the wisdom of their ancestors in 
keeping us at a distance from their coasts. Here, as in every 
oriental state, we are the harbingers of demolition and destruction. 

“The regal power in Japan appears to be very faint and imper¬ 
fect, and a large portion of the islands is in the hands of great 
chiefs, who do as they please in their own districts, hate foreigners 
with the hatred of a local magnate disturbed by new comers, and 
with that hatred intensified and justified by the traditions of Japan.' 1 ' 1 
Saturday Review. 

“ All hope of negotiations being at an end, the fleet took up its 
position opposite Kayosima, and prepared for action. 

“ Two shore batteries opened fire on the fleet, which returned it* 

11 By dusk the town ivas in fiames in several places. 

“ Three forts were silenced. 

“ Our loss consisted of 11 killed and 39 wounded. 

“ Captains Gosling (of the JEuryalus) and Wilrnot were killed. 

“ The whole town is in flames. 

“The fleet stood out, engaging the whole of the batteries. The 
city is one mass of ruins — palace, factories, arsenal, fc. 

“ Three steamers of Satsuma are destroyed completely. 

“ The shore batteries are reputed to have been well served. 

“ It is clear that the actions of the 15th and 16th of August fur¬ 
nish a new point of departure, and end the period of peaceful nego¬ 
tiations with this interesting people.”— Globe. 

“ In spite of our resentment against these overbearing Daimios, 
we cannot help admiring the military equalities and mechanical genius 
of the Japanese, as exhibited in the late engagements with European 
ships.’ — Times. 

“ The Tycoon has returned to his own capital at Jeddo, and it will 
be interesting to watch how Iris policy towards foreigners may have 
been influenced by intercourse with the Mikado, who seems more averse 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAFARTES? 


611 


than ever to their presence in the country. In pursuance of liis insane 
decision to expel all foreigners from Japan, he sent an order a few 
days ago to the Governor of Nagasaki to exterminate those residing 
at that settlement who refused to leave.” 

“Wo must either abandon our position or maintain it by some 
means. There are probably few who would advocate the former 
course; but, if there bo any, they are bound to show on what grounds 
and for whose sake we should break off all communication with these 
islands. We did not establish ourselves there by force, (??) but 
with the full consent ( ? ?) of the only responsible or visible Govern¬ 
ment, and, as far as we can ascertain, with the goodwill of the people, 
properly so called.” 

“ The former course ” would be in accordance with the dictates of 
honour, justice, and humanity. “We did not establish ourselves 
there by force,” because the inhabitants were overawed by the sudden 
appearance of a formidable armament, which they were not prepared 
to withstand. They were the reluctant victims of moral, though not 
of military coercion. “ The visible ” (and invisible) Governments 
succumbed to intrigue and intimidation. Our departure would be 
hailed with the perfect “goodwill” of the entire population. They 
■wouldbe “urgent upon our people, that they might send them out 
of the land in haste;” for they would say, “if we resist their en¬ 
croachments and exactions, we be all dead men” (Exod. xii. 33). 

Under the pretence of bringing peace and prosperity to the 
Maories, we have been gradually violating their privileges, and rob¬ 
bing them of their property. At first, indeed, we may have induced 
the leading men amongst them to say, “ These men are peaceable with 
us, therefore let them dwell in the land and trade therein; for the 
land, behold it is large enough for them ” (Gen. xxxiv.). But our 
contemptuous arrogance and criminal avidity have naturally infused 
into the minds of the natives a feeling of disgust, discouragement, 
and despair. 

“ The criminal folly of Governor Browne has borne its natural 
fruit, and we are in the midst of a bloody Maori war. It seems but 
too probable that both we and the Maories shall bo compelled to 
pay a fearful price for the act of injustice by which these troubles ivere 
commenced. It was a sad misfortune that, at tho most difficult moment 
in the history of our relations with these savage tribes, the conduct of 

qq2 


612 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THU BONAPARTES ? 


affairs should have been in the hands of a man so little equal to the 
difficulties of his post. The passage of a race of warlike barbarians 
to a condition of peaceful civilization is necessarily a critical period. 
There are many influences to provoke them to disaffection. Their 
chiefs cannot bear to part with their old authority. They themselves 
cannot see without a pang of wounded national pride their lands gradually 
absorbed by an alien race whose power and wealth throw them into an 
inferior position. ’ ’ 

“ The only secure basis on which a settlement can be arrived at is 
by our determining to compel the settlers, in their intercourse with 
the Maories, to treat them, not as if they were slaves or savages , but, as 
they are in reality, the most cultivated of their race. Where the 
Maories are kindly used they invariably act with honour.”—John Bull. 

“ The enforcement of Teira’s disputed title, by marching a troop 
of soldiers on to the land in question, was in effect a notice to all the 
tribes in the island that they held their land by favour, not by right, and 
that they might be dispossessed of it at any moment, not by the judg¬ 
ment of a tribunal, but by the simple fiat of tho Governor alone. 
Such an impression, once conveyed, can naturally never be effaced .”— 
Saturday Review. 

Can we be surprised that these unmanly and unchristian proceed¬ 
ings should provoke retaliation and resistance. “ Hath not a Maori 
eyes ? Hath not a Maori hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affec¬ 
tions, passions ? Fed with the same food, hunts with the same 
weapons ? ... If you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong 
us, shall we not revenge ? If we are like you in the rest, we will 
resemble you in that. If a Maori wrong an Englishman, what is 
his humility ?—Kevenge. If an Englishman wrong a Maori, what 
should his sufferance be by English example ?—Why, revenge.” 

. . . why, revenge. 

The villainy you teach me I will execute, and 
It shall go hard but I will better the instruction. 

Shakspeake. 

“Not only are they an * interesting 1 race, in one sense of having 
been reclaimed from cannibalism to reading the Bible and going to 
church, but they really possess qualities which belong to hardly 
any other savages. ‘ They have shown characteristics such as we admire 
most in our ancestors, and regard as the best fruits of patriotism and 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


613 


civilization.' 1 They respect themselves ; they love their country ; they 
are fearless in war; they are apt to imitate and learn; they have 
exhibited in their intercourse with Europeans much sagacity; their 
conduct has often been chivalrous in a high degree .”—Saturday 
Review. 

Why does not our Foreign Secretary extend to Now Zealand the 
philanthropic and plausible aphorisms which he laid down at a 
recent and renowned pothouse festival with respect to the Mexicans ? 
“If the Maori ‘people’ are desirous to remain under British sway, 
we are willing that this arrangement should continue. If the 
‘ people ’ wish for self government, let them declare their determi¬ 
nation, and we shall at once withdraw our forces from the island.” 
If universal suffrage had fair play, I believo it would lead to uni¬ 
versal repudiation of British supremacy, instead of which we 
“breathe out threatenings and slaughter” against the rightful 
owmers, and seem intent upon enmity and extermination. Wo 
must rely upon “the confiscation, or promised confiscation of all the 
lands belonging to those tribes found in arms against her Majesty’s 
troops.” 

“ The best hope of preventing a general rising of the natives, and 
of continuing to retain the fidelity of those who are still friendly to 
us, is by our being enabled, by rapid movements, to inflict a speedy 
and severe punishment on those tribes who have attempted to drive the 
Europeans out of the country .”— Times. 

“ The Maories w r ere stormed in their rifle pits and fled, losing, it 
is reported, about a fourth of their entire number, which latter, at 
this spot, was about 400. Among their killed are seven or eight chiefs 
of distinction , and among them an uncle of the Maoii king. Oui 
ow T n loss was one man killed and 11 wounded.”— lb. 

“So long as the contest lasts, the loss is all on the side of the 
English settler. The native is merely reduced to that condition of 
constant warfare in which it was his pleasure to live before ever a 
white man showed his face in the country. The colonists, on the 
other hand, are ruined. Their trade is crippled, their farms are 
wasted, the capital they have sunk is thrown away, and tho emigra¬ 
tion upon which their settlements depend for theii piospeiity is 

diverted to other lands .”—Saturday Review. 

“Be the causo of quarrel what it may, the issue must be the domina¬ 
tion of one race and the subjection of the other; and the wholo caic of 


614 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


the Government must be devoted to ensuring that that end shall be 
attained as speedily as possible .”—Saturday Review. 

“If the war last and become a general war between the white 
and the coloured man, it will almost necessarily lose the character 
of a civilized conflict, and become a war of extermination .”— lb. 

“It is time, therefore, to consider whether the English ortho 
Maories are to be masters of New Zealand.”— Times. 

It cannot be doubted that the unjust and encroaching spirit deve¬ 
loped in so many instances by the British soldiers and settlers has 
tended to estrange and exasperate the minds of the natives, and has 
counteracted the holy and happy influence which many a faithful 
minister and missionary had been piously and prosperously dissemi¬ 
nating throughout the island. We have forfeited all claim to their 
confidence by maiming and massacreing their comrades and their 
chiefs. 

Maori. 

. . . que vient je d’entendre ? 

Quelle cst cette vertu que je ne puis comprendre ? 

Quel est done ton destin, Vieillard trop genereux ? 

Missionaire. 

D’instruire et secourir les mortels malheureux— 

Maori. 

Eh! qui pent t’inspirer cette auguste elemence? * 

Missionaire. 

Je veux de notre Dicu te donner connoissance— 

Maori. 

Dc ton Dieu? que dis-tu ? quoi, ces tyrans cruels, 

Monstres des alteres dans le sang dcs mortels, 

Qui depeuplent la terre, et dont la barbaric 

En vaste solitude a change rna patrie,f 

Dont l’infame avarice est la supreme loi, 

Mon pere! ils n’ont done pas le meme Dieu que toi P 


* The intercession of the missionaries has sometimes stopped the effusion of 
blood. 

+ The rude dwellings of the natives have often been ruthlessly destroyed. 




OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


615 


Missionaire. 

Us ont le memo Dieu, mon fils—mais ils outragent 
Nes sous la loi tics Saints, dans le crime ils s’engagent— 

Ils ont tons abuse do leur nouveau pouvoir— 

Tu connais leurs forfaits—jc connais mon devoir. 

Voltaire. 

Instead of being satisfied with, acquiring a portion of territory by 
fair purchase and agreement, wo have been continually violating 
their rights, outraging their feelings, stealthily imposing upon their 
ignorance and credulity the chains of “Anglo-Saxon” subjugation, 
and predicting that unless they are enslaved they must end in being 
extirpated. It is, however, possible that disdain and desperation 
may, at a future period, enable some gallant chief to unite his 
oppressed countrymen under the banner of freedom and nationality. 

. . . ces foudres, ces eclairs, 

Ce fer dont nos tyrans sont armes et couverts, 

Ces rapides coursiers qui sous eux font la guerre, 

Pouvaient a leur abord dpouvanter la terre— 

Je les vois d’un ceil fixe, et leur ose insulter— 

Pour les vaincrc, il suffit de ne rien redoubter— 

Leur nouveaute, qui seule a fait ce morde esclavc, 

Subjuque qui la craint, et cede a qui la brave. 

Voltaire. 

With what unexampled alacrity have the Ionians hastened to 
shake off the hated yoke of British protection! And how could we 
expect a different result, when we contemplate the character and 
conduct of the functionaries to whom we entrusted the management 
of their affairs ? One distinguished by his cruelty; another by his 
eccentricity; and the last, by an arrogance and abruptness which 
an influential public writer has recently described in the following 
terms:— 

“It is painful to censure an English public servant in unqualified 
language; but Sir. H. Storks, after doing his utmost secretly to in¬ 
jure every past and present functionary in the island, can claim no 
exemption from the plainest criticism.”— Saturday Review. 

“When he had to deal with larger interests, he displayed the 
defects of a narrow intellect, of an utter ignorance of moral and 
political justice, and of an exaggerated self-esteem. His unfitness 
for his post is sufficiently proved, if more definite indications were 


616 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


wanting, by liis sweeping condemnation of all English residents in 
Corfu as the enemies of his Government. His ungenerous and 
secret denunciations of the English judges, with whom he probably 
maintained friendly relations, are more culpable than his impotent 
dislike of his countrymen in general.”— Saturday Review. 

“It will be proper to inquire farther into the unjustifiable acts of 
the Lord High Commissioner, especially as they are aggravated by 
his extravagantly absurd apology.”— lb. 

“It seems strange that the Lord High Commissioner should 
direct the Ionian Assembly by a formal message as to what they are 
to do after the Protectorate has come to an end and his office has 
ceased to exist. It has been the weakness of many Monarclis to 
seek to reign after their death, but we should have thought that the 
Lord High Commissioner might be content, after the termination of 
his office, to leave the lonians to themselves.”— Times. 

The dynasty established in Greece under the Foreign Secretary’s 
patronage does not appear likely to give much satisfaction. 

“In the market for foreign securities the chief features have again 
been the continued collapse even of the moderate expectations at 
any time entertained, that the new monarchy in Greece would be consti¬ 
tuted with some decent show of a respect for public faith.” 

Nor has England any right to remonstrate, if she takes a retro¬ 
spective view of her conduct during the civil war (or revolt) in 
1745—6 ; she will then see how little entitled she is to cast the first 
stone at Eussia. Mouravieff and his troops have scarcely equalled 
the fiendish ferocity displayed by the Duke of Cumberland and his 
army in Scotland at that period :— 

“ The glory of the victory at Culloden was sullied by the barbarity 
of the soldiers. They had been provoked by their former disgraces 
to the most savage thirst of revenge. Not contented with the blood 
which was so profusely shed in the heat of action, they traversed the 
field after the battle , and massacred those miserable wretches who lay 
maimed and expiring ; nay, some officers acted a part in this cruel 
scene of assassination, the triumph of low illiberal minds, uninspired 
by sentiment, untinctured by humanity.”— Smollett , xii. 412. 

“ The duke took possession of Inverness, where thirty-six deserters, 
convicted by a court martial, were ordered to be executed. Then he 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


017 


detached several parties to ravage the country. One of these appre¬ 
hended the Lady Mackintosh, who was sent prisoner to Inverness. 
They did not plunder her house, hut drove away her cattle, though 
her husband was actually in the service of Government. The castle 
of Lord Lovat was destroyed ... In a word, all the gaols in Great 
Britain , from the Capital northwards , were filled with these unfortunate 
captives ; and great numbers of them were crowded together in the 
holds of ships, where they perished in the most deplorable manner, 
for want of necessaries, air, and exercise. . . . The Duke sent off 
detachments in small bands, to hunt down the fugitives , and lay waste the 
country ivith fire and 'sword. The castles of Glengary and Locliiel 
were plundered and burned. Every house , hut , or habitation met ivith 
the same fate , without distinction ; all the cattle and provisions were 
carried off; the men were either snoT upon the mountains, like 

WILD BEASTS, OR PUT TO DEATn IN COLD BLOOD, WITHOUT FORM OF 
TRIAL; THE WOMEN, AFTER HAVING SEEN TnEIR HUSBANDS AND FATHERS 
MURDERED, WERE SUBJECTED TO BRUTAL VIOLATION, AND THEN TURNED 
OUT NAKED, WITH THEIR CHILDREN, TO STARVE ON THE BARREN HEATHS. 

One whole family was inclosed in a barn, and consumed to ashes. 
Their ministers of vengeance were so alert in the execution of their 
office, that, in a few days, there was neither house, cottage, 

MAN, NOR BEAST TO BE SEEN IN THE COMPASS OF FIFTY MILES ; ALL WAS 

RUIN, SILENCE, AND DESOLATION. - (Smollett, 413-15). Prince 

Charles was obliged to trust liis life to the fidelity of above fifty 
individuals, and many of these were in the lowest paths of fortune. 
They knew, that a price of £30,000 was set upon his head, and that, 
by betraying him, they should enjoy wealth and affluence; but they 
detested the thought of obtaining riches on such infamous terms, 
and ministered to his necessities with the utmost zeal and fidelity, 
even at the hazard of their own destruction,” 


618 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


XII Conclusion . 

It is a matter of grave consideration, how and when this era of 
general distrust, alarm, suspicion, and expense, all of wliicli have 
occurred “ unius oh noxarn ac furias,” is likely to terminate. It is 
possible that the exigencies of the Man of December’s position may 
compel him to engage in an unprovoked foreign war, in order to 
employ and enrich that immense and impatient army, to which he is 
mainly indebted for his past success, and present security ; in which 
case, he might be defied and defeated by the Russian power, of 
which formerly (as in the case of Austria) he was the wily and wanton 
assailant. But the duration of his ill-gotten supremacy must depend 
mainly upon the French themselves; and seldom has any great 
nation been reduced to such a state of abject and entire prostration. 
So far as regards the moral, intellectual, high-minded, and honour¬ 
able portion of that great and glorious people, they are utterly desti¬ 
tute of influence or authority. The preponderance against the 
Imperial regime amongst the thoughtful and well-educated classes, is 
proportionally as large as the majority which he commands, in his 
own obsequious senate. 

The most lucrative and important offices, which should be as¬ 
signed to the wisest and the worthiest, are monopolised by the wick¬ 
edest and the worst; and they are bound, by every motive of self- 
interest, to praise and to prop up this colossal fabric of tyranny and 
usurpation, so that the Man of December can carry on his darkest 
and most desperate designs through their instrumentality, without 
compunction, and without control. 

“ You know I am your creature; my life and fortune in your 
power — to disoblige you brings me certain ruin. Allow it, I 
would betray you. I’ll not be a traitor to myself. I don’t pretend 
to honesty, because you know I am a rascal. But I would convince 
you, from the necessity of my being firm to you.”— Congreve. 

“France had famous generals—Changarnier, Bedeau, Lamori- 
ciere, Cavaignac, and Lefl.6 ; but these men had shared the general fate 
of the eminence and honour of France —they had been arrested in their 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


619 


beds and flung into prison vans, and were now removed from tlie 
service of their country. To command the French army in their 
place, there was, indeed, a Marshal of France, but one whose baton 
had been won, not in the field of battle against the enemy, but in 
service less indicative of military genius—on Thursday, the day of 
blood, against the peaceable inhabitants of Paris. This was Mar¬ 
shal Achille St. Arnaud, formerly Jaques lo Boy,” — Saturday 
Review. 

Introduce universal suffrage into tho vegetable world, and the 
thorns and thistles, the dandelions and the nettles, the briars and 
the butter-cups will out-vote all the flowers most distinguished by 
their beauty, their fragrance, or their usefulness — overrun all 
the choicest portions of tho garden or of the grove, and confer the 
regal dignity upon the bramble, in order to maintain their own 
positions. 

“The multitude are shortsighted in their views, partial in their 
interests, and impulsive in feeling. An appeal to them is, not to 
say worse, an appeal to blind chance.”—- Times. 

“ The first service which M. Tliouvonel rendered to the spread of 
useful information, was to destroy the supposition that there exists a 
Constitution in France. He was very desirous ‘ not to overlook the 
conditions of our Constitutional regime .’ He was very careful to guard 
against the supposition, that a Minister and a Senator can owe a 
double account of his conduct. 1 It is to the Sovereign alone ’ that 
such an account is due. The definition of the functions of the 
French Senate would be rather an interesting inquiry, after this 
announcement; though it might result in leaving them nothing but 
their braided coats and—their salaries.”— St. James’s Chronicle. 

“Is it in bitter irony, or in the. wantonness and insolence of 
tyranny that he praises the English liberty of the press in the very 
same week that he carries the French proscription of liberty of 
thought to a height unknown before ? The newspapers have pro¬ 
duced what they call the martyrology of the French newspaper 
press for the last year .”—Saturday Review. 

“ How the political education necessary for the exercise of perfect 
liberty is ever to bo attained by a people who are barred from tho 
interchange of political thought, is a problem which he has not 
deemed it necessary to solve.”— II. 


620 


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“ It is by these little things that the Emperor allows the world to 
get a glimpse of his real estimate of his precarious position; and 
that he does permit us, even for a moment, to peep behind the 
dark curtain with which he shrouds his melancholy consciousness of 
insecurity, only shows how really small he is, and how serious are 
his misgivings .”—Saturday Review. 

11 Does the ruler of the Tuileries, the Elect of France, the Saviour 
of Society, the dispenser of glory, wealth, and prosperity to the 
happy millions who choose, as well as accept, his rule, feel himself 
compelled to enter into a personal wrangle with a brother-student in 
history? Does he feel the ground so tottering, and his grasp of 
empire so insecure, that he must proscribe an exiled candidate for a 
little literary reputation?”— lb. 

“ Government by representative assemblies is one of the require¬ 
ments of the age, and, accordingly, he formally sets them up, with a 
suffrage as popular as it can be made. But what ho lias yielded in 
gross, he takes back in detail. The regulations which trammel the 
legislative assemblies are so contrived that they are powerless to 
control the Government; and, as a further precaution, the elections 
which supply them are so manipulated, that the main body of the 
legislators are mere Imperial nominees.”— lb. 

The condition of all that is great and good in France at this 
moment, resembles that of the bones which the prophet saw in the 
midst of the valley; they are as dumb as the bones were dry; and it 
seems almost necessary to ask, whether they are capable of vitality 
and vigour ? their feeling is, that, in a political point of view, “ their 
hope is lost, they are cut off for their parts.” But the genius of 
patriotism may at length breathe upon them, and revive their dor¬ 
mant energies, so that they “ may live and stand up upon their feet 
an exceeding great army;” and the honoured exiles, who, at the 
usurping autocrat’s insolent and intolerant behest are now pining 
or perishing in the country of the stranger, may “ live and be placed 
in their own land.” 

“ What manner of man was he, who overcame the cold jealousy of 
a proud and ancient race—who broke in on the guarded friendship 
of our gravest diplomatists—who wrapped Great Britain in the folds 
of an entangling alliance—who alienated our rulers from their 
natural allies, and led them far away from safe traditional paths ? 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 621 

Mr. Kinglake describes him. And, if the description be true, surely 
two great nations were never so befooled, never before has fortune been so 
blind, never has France been so degraded, never has England been such a 
miserable dupe, and never have our great statesmen in council exhibited 
such unmi tigated foolishness. A man of blank, wooden looks, of opaque 
features, with the bearing and countenance of a weaver oppressed 
by long hours of monotonous indoor work, which makes the body 
stoop and keeps the eye downcast, turning a greenish hue in moments 
of danger,^ with a sluggish flow of ideas, of dull intellect, passing the 
hours of a studious youth and the prime of a thoughtful manhood in 
contriving how to apply stratagem to the scienco of jurisprudence— 
with just enough of daring to lead him into dangerous enterprises, 
and without the nerve to behave well in or get well out of them— 
nay, it is more than insinuated by Mr. Kinglake, a coward in the 
presence of an enemy.”— Times. 

The Printing House Square oracle denounces and depreciates the 
portrait traced by the energetic and eloquent pen, which wrote under 
the influence of genius and of justice. But, I believe, that, through¬ 
out the length and breadth of Europe, there are few rightminded, and 
independent patriots, who will not, ex animo, assent, not only to the 
premises of Mr. Kinglake, with regard to the character and conduct 
of the Man of December, but to the inferences, which the Times 
hypothetically deduces, as to the infatuation displayed, and the 
infamy incurred, by the sovereigns and statesmen through whom 
his base and bloody usurpation was acquiesced in, and even 
applauded, in December 1854. “In reference to these acts, I leave 
to the British Premier and his partisans the province (or, if they 
prefer it, the privilege) of eulogy or extenuation. As for me,— 

Je soutiendrai toujours, morbleu! qu’ils sont mauvais 

Et qu’un homme est pendable apres les avoir faits. 

Molieiie. 

“What do we see?” says the virtuous and incorruptible exile, 
Victor Schleicher, in a spirit of just and generous indignation? 
“ Kings and emperors stretch out their hands to the repro¬ 
bate man; they adopt him as one of themselves. The King of 
Piedmont dispatches his own brother to pay him a visit; the Duke 

* Le vert est la paleur des gens livides.—- Victor Eugo, 


622 


* OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


of Saxe Coburg frequents his dwelling; the Emperor of Russia 
‘ offers him a sincere friendship,’ and the King of the Belgians 
makes him amicable advances. In tine, at the very moment, wheu, 
after two years of power, he still delivers up to the sultry guillotine of 
Cayenne 130 citizens, whose only crime is that of having defended 
the constitutions of tho country, a statesman (Lord Palmerston) 
exclaims, ‘ The age of Augustus is now beginning anew in Paris !’ ” 
(Kinglalce , p. 4.) u What did M. Bonaparte say, in his appeal to the 
people on tho 2nd December ? 1 In our days, when the men, who have 
ruined two monarchies, strive to fetter me, in order to overthrow 
the Republic, my duty is to baffle their perfidious projects, to 
maintain the Republic, and to save the country.’ What said 
M. Morny, on December 2, at eight in the morning, in his tele¬ 
graphic despatch to the prefects of the departments ? 1 The Presi¬ 

dent of the Republic makes an appeal to the nation— he maintains 
the Republic.’ What said M. St. Arnaud on December 9, in his 
address to the army ? ‘You have saved the Republic.’ Do not 
declarations as formal as these, and made in such a circumstance, 
testify to the strong inclination, which the traitors found to exist, in 
the immense majority of a nation, towards a democratic Govern¬ 
ment ? If the criminal attempt of December had been in accordance 
with the wishes of Prance, would the conspirators, to secure their 
position, have found it needful to imprison one hundred thousand citizens , 
and to banish, deport, transport, and interner twenty-eight thousand ? 
If Prance accepted the Empire, would the heads of her most illustrious 
generals, as well as those of her humblest working men, remain 
struck with proscription? If France agreed with the conquerors* 
would they have suppressed de facto the national guard, which now' 
exists only nominally* and is not called to any service? If tho 
Empire only wore a respectable appearance, would all the notabilities 
of the country, who are most in favour of order, and most hostile to 
the red republicans, scrupulously stand aloof from it ? If the ‘ six 
thousand knaves,’ had, in their behalf, seven millions of votes, 
w ould they be obliged to keep up in Paris an army of 100,000 men 
as a guard for themselves?” (p. 51.) 

“The contemptuous abhorrence of the Times w T as expressed (at 
the crisis) in the most pungent and powerful terms. In fact, 
when the crime w r as committed, ‘ Every one (as M. Sclicclchcr 
records) knows with what energy of indignation the press of 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 623 

England lias unanimously chastised the cowardice, the dishonesty, 
the ferociousness of the chief of the 6,000 knaves*'' during De¬ 
cember, and since then, the savage brutality of that which is 
called his Government.’ ” {lunglake, p. 16.) 

“ The Emperor we shall see,” says the Times , “ will be Punch I. 
The Empire, wo shall see, will be that of tho hero of the streets, 
who, after a noisy and impudent performance of tricks, blasphemies, 
and blow's, is carried off by devils.”— Times, Kov. 2, 1852. 

“ Christendom had imagined, that the progress of humanity had 
assured the victory of reason over force, of enlightenment over super¬ 
stition, of morality over the baser vices, and of justice over tho 
fouler crimes. The success of this revolution would establish just 
the contrary. Let those vdio will, assert, that the monstrous attempt 
is right—let those, v r ho can, suppose, that it will prove triumphant. 
We shall believe it w r hen w r e see the brute assume dominion over 
man, and the powers of hell prevail against the God of heaven.”— 
Times , Jan. 9, 1852. 

Is he not the same man, vdiose government also the Times sum¬ 
marily qualified as “ the most abject servitude?” (19 Kov. 1852.) And 
what has been done, since the perpetration of this foul outrage upon 
every religious and righteous principle, to neutralise or nullify its 
enormity? France is more loaded with debt, more destitute of 
liberty, more demoralised by a system of profligate and profuse spe¬ 
culation and jobbery,f than at any previous period of its history. 
England must trace to the “ unmitigated foolishness ” of its “ great (?) 
statesmen, the thirty millions which have been added to its annual 
expenditure, incurred, as the Times itself informs us, to guard against 
French aggression, which never would have been dreaded but for the 
Man of December’s undying hatred of the nation, which, at Waterloo, 
liberated France and Europe from his uncle’s intolerable thraldom. 
Italy, in consequence of his selfish and sinister interference, is com¬ 
pletely overmastered, and overawed by Imperial influence— some 
provinces desolated by bloodsliod, the whole country torn by discon- 

* An expression applied to the Bonapartists, at the very tribunal of the National 
Assembly of France, by M. Jules Lasteyrie. 

+ One fact which creates great impression on the market is the systematic sales 
for heavy amounts daily taking place on account of large houses. Speculators, who 
believe that the future has no secrets for a Kothschild or a Pereire, draw the most 
sinister inferences from it.”— Times. 


624 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


tent, the debts and public burdens exorbitantly augmented, the 
army placed on a footing disproportioned to its resources, and bank¬ 
ruptcy by no means improbable. Germany, Belgium, and Switzer¬ 
land aro all compelled to keep up large armaments (otherwise 
unnecessary) to resist and repel his insidious machinations. They 
look upon him as watchful and wary shepherds regard a wolf, whom 
they expect to break forth ere long, and go about seeking whom he 
may devour.* He has only acquired and maintained his own pre¬ 
eminence by establishing the superiority of ignorance over intel¬ 
ligence, of peculation over patriotism, of venality over virtue. I 
remember hearing of a contest between two rivals, which possessed 
the greatest amount of money : the one produced a bag, in which 
there were some thousands of sovereigns and five shilling pieces, 
with a considerable amount of pure copper money also; the other 
came armed with a number of sacks, which contained a scanty supply 
of sovereigns, very light, and much the worse for wear; some hun¬ 
dreds of shillings and sixpences (most of them spurious), and an 
immense accumulation of farthings. The possessor of tho precious 
coins thought himself sure of success; but the other pulled out a 
pistol, and insisted that the decision should be according to the 
number of pieces, and not according to their intrinsic value, so that 
every farthing should be reckoned equal to a sovereign. The result 
may be easily imagined. It is precisely on this same principle, that 
the suffrages of Berryer, Montalembert, Guizot, and Jules Favre are 
more than counterbalanced by those of any five drunken and dissi¬ 
pated claqueurs , who are hired to hiccup “ ViveVJEmpereur ” during 
the orgies at Compiegne. 

“ There has always been a vast amount of latent opposition in the 
country, waiting for a favourable opportunity to express itself.”— 
Press. 

How mortifying must it be to the self-respect of every upright 

* “ I yesterday informed you that, in reply to the question put by his Majesty as 
to how many men could he collected under arms by March next, Marshal Itandon 
returned a detailed statement, prefaced by the important proviso that, before he 
could organise an army of 690,000 men on a war footing, he required an extra¬ 
ordinary credit of 12 millions sterling.”— Times. 

“ A single spark would kindle a conflagration from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus— 
from theMediterranear*^ the Arctic Sea.”— lb. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


G25 


Frenchman to see all the most important offices of the State mono¬ 
polised by puppets and popinjays, by trimmers and turncoats, of 
whom it is difficult to say whether they are most cordially despised 
by their enemies or by their employer! Supposing, that Morny were 
to set his face against any Imperial mandate, would not the indig¬ 
nant autocrat turn round upon him, and say ?— 

Chacun tremble sous toi, chacun t’offre dcs vooux, 

Ta fortune est bicn haut; tu peux ce que tu veux— 

Mais tu ferais pitie memo a ceux qu’il irrite, 

Si je t'abandonnais a ton peu de merite. 

ClNNA. 

And if Persigny were to side with his colleaguo, the reply to 
him would be— 

Ma faveur fait ta gloire, et ton pouvoir en yient— 

Elle seule t’eleve—elle seulc te soutient— 

C’est elle qu’on adore, et non pas ta personne— 

Tu n’as credit ni rang qu’autant qu’elle t/en donne. 

ClNNA, 

Every candid and consistent friend to truth and independence 
must instinctively shrink from all contact or communication with 
the hardened and haughty apostates, who, with sordid and supple 
sycophancy, have sold themselves to do evil, in defiance of the con¬ 
tempt and execration of mankind. 

Yous aimez la fortune, et moi la yerite. 

GlLliERT. 

11 M. Baroche acquired immense notoriety as a political agitator 
in 1847. It was in defence of the liberty of the press, which was so 
rutlilessly persecuted by the Government of that day; of the right 
of holding meetings, that originated the famous banquet campaign, 
in which he figured as one of the most prominent leaders ; of elec¬ 
toral reform, of which he was the most ardent advocate ; and of the 
Bill of Impeachment, which he signed on the 22d of February, 1848, 
against MM. Guizot and Duchatel for their attacks on liberty, that 
he recommended himself to the suffrages of the electors, little think¬ 
ing that the Throne, which he helped to burn on the Place de la 
Bastille, he would again, like the fierce Clovis, bow his head to and 
adore.”— Times. 

Liberty, to whom he had sworn allegiance, must soon have per¬ 
il R 


62 C 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


ceived how unwillingly lie retained his irksome position beneath 
her banner ; and how intent he was upon exchanging the privations 
of the patriot for the pomps of the parasite— 

perfi.de, je le vois, 

Tu comptes les momcns quo tu perds arec moi— 

Adorant la splendeur Napoleonienne, 

Tu souffles a regret, qu’une autre t’entretienne, 

Tu lui paries du cceur ; tu la cherches des yeux— 

Je no te retiens plus; sauve-toi de ces lieux— 

Ya lui juror la foi que tu m’avais juree— 

Ya profaner des Dieux la majeste sacrce— 

Ces Dieux, ces justes Dieux, n’auront pas oublie, 

Que les memos sermens avec moi t’ont lie. 

Incensed at the “plainness of speech” with which liberty denounced 
his treachery and tergiversation, the ex-champion of free discussion 
desired that she should be expelled forthwith from France, and 
“prohibited at the frontier ” from ever returning. 

‘ ‘ I think, that I myself can urge a more valid claim than the Man 
of December for presiding over the destinies of France. It is true, 
that my pretensions are of a negative character, and that I share 
them in common with millions. They are founded on the conside¬ 
ration, that I am not a Bonaparte, that I am not the nephew of a 
daring and desperate adventurer, who trampled remorselessly under 
his feet every principle of justice and humanity, sacrificed at the 
shrine of his ambition many millions of lives, and, after having only 
been the object of universal dread, became at last the victim of 
universal detestation, insomuch that the exclusion of himself and his 
family from the throne of France, became, by the unanimous verdict 
of Europe, a fundamental article in the code of nations. For ten 
years Napoleon had governed with an iron rod—had levied taxes 
and soldiers at his will, silenced the legislature, and corrupted and 
enslaved the press, without dreaming of any necessity for reforming 
his system. When he fell, he fell partly because Europe was weary of 
Napolconism , but chiefly because France was weary too. The intel¬ 
lectual classes were tired of being oppressed, commercial men were 
exhausted by continual wars, and the masses had found out at last, 
that intermittent decimation was a heavy price to pay for the main¬ 
tenance of the principle of social equality. A treaty of peace with 
him meant the dispersion of an alliance, which could never have 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TOE BONAPARTES ? 


627 


been reunited, to be followed by a renewal of the aggressive wars which 
had for twenty years' desolated Europe”—Saturday Review. 

“ Ma conscience est pure,” s’eerie Louis Napoleon, apres 1’attentat 
de Strasbourg. “ Elle ne me reproche rien.” Et il etait sincere. 
Car il croyait, qu’ en renversant le gouvernement do Juillet pour in- 
troniser l’idee Napoleonienne, il allait servir les interots de la Franco 
et de l’humanite (!!!) et devant la grandeur d’une telle fin, pouvait 
il se preoccuper beaucoup de la moralite des moyens ? ( Molinari , p. 
157.) Tous les gouvernemens, cj[ui ne sont point assis sur le prin- 
cipe Napoleonienne, et faconnes sur son modele, se sentent incessam- 
ment menaces par ce nouveau Christianismepolitique, qui emploie comma 
mstrumens de propayande la carabine Minie et le canon raye . L’Europe 
so couvre de fortifications, et s’epuise en armemens. Sa securite a 
diminue, et cependant la prime annuelle dont elle la paye, s’est 
augmentee de plus de deux milliards (p. 162.) Le second Empire 
est aujourd ’liui a son apogee. Est il destine a se consolider, et a 
regir desormais la France, ou est-il condamne a sombrer, comme son 
aine, dans quelque cataclysme Europeen? Nous ne voulons pas 
essayer de prophetiser son sort. Tout ce que nous pouvons dire 
e’est, quo les idees et les syst^mes, qui se mettent en travers des pro- 
gres de l’humanite, meme en pretendant les servir, finissent tot 
ou tard, par etre emportes comme line vaine poussiere—e’est que la 
verite seule appartient a l’avenir. Or, l’idee Napoleonienne, nous avons 
essaye de le demontrer, ne contient pas plus la verite politique, que le 
socialisme de 1842 ne contenait la verite economique. Elle n’est 
autre cliose, en un mot, que du socialisme politique. Elbe passera 
donc, apres avoir , comme taut ddautres faux systemes , que la force a 
intronises , que la force a renverses , retarde la marche de VIturn unite, et 
peutetre son auteur est il destine a redire, un jour ces tristes 
paroles, quo le captif de St. Helene laissait ecliapper dans les amer- 
tumes de l’exil, “ J’ai peri pareeque je me suis mis en travers 
des idees mon temps.”— Ib. p. 168. 

It was entirely through the intrigues, and for the interests of the 
Man of December, that the foolish and fatal war in the Crimea was 
forced upon the British Cabinet, some of the members of which were 
his dupes, and others his accomplices. It was through his instru¬ 
mentality that England was gradually estranged from the other 
Western Powers, and embarked in a costly undertaking, which her 
true and honest allies could not sanction or support. On his head, 

R R 2 


628 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


tlierefore, lies tlie bloodshed of the thousands of French and British 
soldiers, who perished during that lamentable crisis, by cholera or 
by carnage. “ France was still lying under the men who had got 
her down on the night of the 2nd of December; and it was in vain 
that her people at that time chanced to love peace better than war, 
for they had no longer a voice in state affairs. The French Emperor 
still wielded the whole strength of the nation, and labouring to turn 
a way men's thoughts from the origin of his po wer, he was very willing 
to try to earn for the restored Empire that kind of station and title, 
which the newest of dynasties may acquire by signal achievements 
in war.— Kinglalce, 4, 6. 

It is true, that he was not the author of the preposterous onslaught 
upon Sebastopol, in which a blundering and obstinate British states¬ 
man persuaded his reluctant colleagues to concur. In a fatal crisis 
of infatuation, ‘ ‘ it was in a council of the whole people that England 
had resolved upon the enterprise.”— lb. II. 132. 

He, however, immediately acquiesced in the ill-advised suggestion, 
against which all his generals and their English coadjutors (with 
the exception of Lord Kaglan, whose own judgment was wholly 
opposed to it) at a subsequent period protested; but if he had not 
craftily inveigled the British Cabinet into a declaration of war, no 
blood would have been wickedly shed, and no treasures wantonly 
wasted. IIow long will the gallant soldiers of glorious France 
submit to be the tools of a crafty and capricious despot, who sends them 
at his own pleasure, and for his own purposes, to remote and un¬ 
healthy countries, whose inhabitants have committed no outrage, to 
plunder and massacre the unoffending victims of Bonapartist arro¬ 
gance and ambition ? 

Be quel droit, s’il vous plait, dans vos tristes querelles, 

Faut-il que l’on meurc pour vous ? 

Floriax. 

They will,.I believe, erelong, think more about Strasburg than 
about Solferino, and refuse to be the satellites of the man who has 
so strangled the freedom and squandered the finances of their 
country. Can they forget how ruthlessly and recklessly he drags 

* “ Sometimes, within the space of only a few hours, hundreds of Frcndimcn 
dropped dowm in the sudden agonies of cholera. Out of three French divisions, no 
less than 10,000 lay dead, or struck down by the cholera.”— Kinglalce , II. 133. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 829 

them from tlieir humble and happy homes? 11 Until the mighty 
nation is challenged, the great bulk of the French peasantry are, 
perhaps, more homely, more rustic, more unadventurous than most 
of the people of Europe. From these quiet millions of people 

MANY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SMALL, SAD, HARMLESS-LOOKING MEN ARE 

every year torn by conscription ; and immense energy—energy 
informed with the traditions of an ancient and ever warlike nation, 
is brought to bear upon the object of turning these forlorn young 
captives into able soldiers. All that instruction can achieve is care¬ 
fully done; but the enforced change from rural life to the life of 
barracks and camps seems not to be favourable to the animal spirits 
of the men ; for although, when seen in masses or in groups working 
hard at their military duties, they always appear to be brisk and 
almost merry, tiieir seeming animation is the result of smart 
orders ; the animation of a horse when the rowels in either side are 
lightly touching his flanks; and during the hours whilst they are 
left to themselves, the French soldiers of the line engaged in cam¬ 
paigning are commonly depressed and spiritless.”— Kinglalce , II. 387. 

u What opinion can French officers or soldiers entertain of a man, 
who, wholly unacquainted with military matters, and utterly desti¬ 
tute of military experience, pretends to prescribe plans to his 
generals, a practice only j ustifiablc on the supposition (in most in¬ 
stances, perhaps, a just one) that most of thorn are as incapable and as 
ignorant as himself? If the warlike Zouaves composing part of 
this division had known that their long, toilsome movement in the 
great summer heats was the result of a plan for placing the French 
army in position at a distance of several hundred miles from the 
enemy, they would have solaced the labours of the march by sharing 
the repute of the schemer, who contrived it, and making him the 
butt of their wit.”— II. 

Whilst the Changarniers, Bedeaus, and Lamoricieres were de¬ 
posed and disgraced (I should rather say honoured) by being the 
victims of the perfidious usurper, “ we saw something of a strange 
decree, which emanated (2 December 1851), that services rendered 

BY MILITARY MEN IN THEIR OPERATIONS AGAINST FRENCHMEN SHOULD 
HOLD GOOD AS TITLES to ADVANCEMENT IN THE SAME WAY AS THOUGH 
THEY WERE DEEDS IN WAR AGAINST THE FOREIGNER ! ! ! * . . . TllO prin- 

* Tho men, women, and children, mangled, mutilated, or massacred on that day, 
were immolated at the altar of their country’s liberties, for the mere purpose of per^ 


630 


OUGHT FRANCE TO "WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


ciple, though, partly waived for a time in 185G, was found to he still 
in dire operation long after the close of the Russian war, just as, in 
a later year, the French Emperor entrusted to a scared and bewil¬ 
dered literary man the command of a whole French army, so now 

HE COMMITTED THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG-COMMITTED IT ALMOST EX¬ 

CLUSIVELY TO MEN WHO nAD SHARED WITH HIM IN THE ADVENTURE 

which put France under his feet. His reckoning was, that, whe¬ 
ther it were led by honourable and skilled commanders, or were tossed 
and flung into action by him and his December friends, a French army 
engaged in a short, brisk war against a Continental state, would 
always be likely to push its way to more or less of success ; and if it 
should chance to do this under the leadership, or apparent leader¬ 
ship, of him and his friends, he and they would become similar to 
heroes. . . . He who commanded the army was St. Arnaud, formerly 
le Roi, the person suborned by Fleury .”—Kinglake II. 516. 

“Canrobert had the misfortune to have upon his hands the blood 
of the Parisians slain by his brigade on the 4tli December, but it 
was said, to his honour, that he, more than all the other generals 
employed at that time, had loathed the work of having to abet the 
midnight seizure of his country’s foremost generals.”— lb. 286. 

11 He commanded one of the brigades which operated against the 
gay Boulevards on the 4th December.”— lb. 517. 

“ Passing over the misdemeanours (I should, perhaps, say merits) 
of the other Decemberist worthies, I may content myself with observ¬ 
ing, that the army laboured under the weight of a destiny, which 
ordained that all its chiefs should be men ghosen for their com¬ 
plicity in a midnight plot, or else for acts of street slaughter ; 
and had. perpetrated an extensive massacre of tiieir 

UNARMED FELLOW COUNTRYMEN” - lb. 518 

I cannot persuade myself, that the brave soldiers of brilliant France 
will much longer submit to be employed in such wild and wicked 
expeditions, and to be led by such damaged and disreputable com- 

petuating a proscribed and odious dynasty, by reviving for a time the “ reign of 
terror ” and bloodshed. Soon after the dead carcases had been clandestinely interred, 
we were told that U V empire e'est la paix”—clamantibus quibusdam — (as did the 
fulsome flatterers of a former criminal despot) ipsum esse concordiam. (Suetonius.) 
If one man of honour and integrity had been in his counsels, he would have im¬ 
plored him not to pass the Rubicon, and steep himself to the very lips in blood and 
infamy-* “ etiam nunc regredi possumus” — lb. 



OUGHT FRANCE TO WOItSniT TIIE BONATAitTES ? 631 

manders. They must, I think, ere long, feel exasperated, at being 
treated as the mere tools of a usurper, from whose endeavours to 
bribe or bully them the troops turned away with disgust and disdain 
at Strasburg and at Boulogne. The day may, perhaps, be at hand, 
when the legitimate monarch may bo summoned to receive the 
hearty homage of their allegiance, and the efficient help of their 
arms, when France will say, in reference to the Bonapartes— 

Mon sceptre n’est point fait pour lours mains etrangeres. 

Voltaire. 

0 douleur! 0 vengeance! 0 vertu qui m’animes, 
rouvez-vous en ces licux moins quo n’ont pu los crimes! 

Voltaire. 

Heli. 

“ Have hopes, and hear the voice of better fate. 

I’ve heard there are disorders ripe for mutiny 
Among the troops, who thought to share the plunder 
Which Bonaparte, to his own use and avarice 
Converts—this happy news has reach’d the frontiers, 

"Where many of your subjects, long oppress’d 
With tyranny and grievous impositions, 

Are ris’n in arms, and call for chiefs to head 
And lead ’em to regain their rights and liberty. 

Osmyn. 

“ By heav’n, thou’st rous’d me from my lethargy ! 

My soul is up in arms, ready to charge 

And bear amidst the foe with conqu’ring troops. 

I hear ’em call to lead ’em on to liberty, 

To victory ; their shouts and clamours rend 

My ears, and reach the heav’ns—‘ Whore is the King?’ ” 

Congreve. 

I again remark, that the two chief supports of the Man of 
December’s throne are, first, the proud and pampered army,* 
by which he deluged Paris with blood, and holds it in subjec¬ 
tion ; and secondly, the noisy and narrow-minded millions of 

* II suit foujours son but jusqu’a ce qu’il l’emporte— 

Le premier sang verse rend sa fureur plus forte— 

II 1’amorce, il l’acharne, il en etcint l’horreur, 

Kt nc lui laisse plus ni pitie hi terreur. 

• - Corneille.- 


632 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTE S ? 


tlie rural population, who, from a spirit of envy and malignity, 
employ the suffrages conferred upon them by the Man of De¬ 
cember, in thwarting the views and nullifying the influence of 
all the enlightened advocates of free and constitutional govern¬ 
ment. It seems, however, as if the patience of France is at 
last (and not too soon) beginning to be exhausted. The late elec¬ 
tions have developed an extent of anti-imperialism, trifling, indeed, 
in comparison with the amount which still remains latent, but which 
has astonished the friends of freedom, and appalled the satellites of 
despotism. The truthful and triumphant verdict has been ratified 
and rejoiced in throughout the entire length and breadth of Franco, 
and has been pronounced, in spite of the most flagitious and most 
flagrant display of bribery and intimidation, of cunning and cajolery. 
The unpopularity of Bonapartist candidates was as unprecedented 
as it was unbounded. In many instances, the very circumstance of 
being opposed to the Government was, in itself, a ground of prefer¬ 
ence, let the candidate’s principles be what they might—the question 
being rather what he was not than what he was. 

11 A gentleman of property and station, residing in a certain de¬ 
partment (which, for obvious reasons, I do not mention), really de¬ 
voted to the Imperial Government, though holding no offiicial 
position under it, of undoubted truth and honour, communicates his 
impressions of the last elections as lie witnessed them :— 

“ ‘Besides the official publicity in journals, placards, handbills, 
distribution of voting tickets for the official candidate, all at the 
public expense, independent of the battery of electoral claqueurs , the 
profusion of puffs of every sort, the distribution of bribes to the 
communes in the name of the official candidate, the most absurd 
promises were made to the ignorant crowd, and believed. I have to 
notice another trick which has been employed with success, and which 
turns universal suffrage and secret voting into a disgraceful carica¬ 
ture. There was a new mode of getting votes in the rural districts, 
and particularly in the central departments, founded on the deplor¬ 
able ignorance of the population on whom it has been practised. It 
consisted in attaching to the card of the elector, which certifies his 
right to vote, the voting-ticket with the name of the official candi¬ 
date, so that the peasant who was incapable of making any distinc¬ 
tion between the certificate and tho ticket, carried both to the ballot- 
box, where they were detached. In most cases it was the garde - 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


633 


champetre wlio was charged with exhibiting the certificate and 
detaching the voting-ticket, which was then handed to the voter, 
who had no alternative but to drop it in the ballot-box ; and it was 
this trick, worthy of Scapin, which many of the prefects did not 
hesitate to permit in the august name of universal suffrage.’ ” 

“ The Government obtained an overwhelming majority, but it did 
not the less sustain a decisive defeat. Although the rural popula¬ 
tion—whose numerical preponderance in France is as overwhelming 
as is the moral and intellectual influence in Paris—returned a 
compact body of official candidates too devoted to the Empire to 
even pretend to independence ; the large towns, with Paris at their 
head, showed, some by returning Opposition candidates, and others 
by the large number of votes given for them, that the most active 
and most influential classes of Frenchmen are tired of the tutelage 
in which they have so long been kept, and are anxious, if only for 
the sake of their own personal dignity, for a little more (!!!) 
liberty. ’ ’— Times. 

11 Persons of all shades of opinion have turned to him, with 
regret, no doubt, for they feel no sympathy for him , and have little 
confidence in him , but because they had no choice but to vote for the 
Government candidate, and an avowed Government candidate 
they resolved to reject at any cost. M. Gueroult accepted the 
programme of the electors demanding the ‘ crowning of the edifice,’ 
—liberty of the press, municipal liberty, Ministerial responsibility 
—and lie has been accepted by them.”— lb. 

“ J/. ILavin has been elected in the Department of La Manche as well 
as in Paris , and 1L Jules Favre at Lyons as well as in Paris , and as 
both will, in all probability, make their choice in favour of the 
Departments, there will again be two seats for the capital vacant, 
to which it is expected M. Odilon Parrot, or M. Gamier Pages, and 
M. Dufaure will be elected. 

o This defeat is keenly felt , and it is not astonishing that it should be 
so. The 152,000 electors of a city, for which so much lias been done 
in the way of material improvement, have, under every disadvantage, 
and in two trials, quietly but decidedly refused to gratify the Govern¬ 
ment by returning even one solitary candidate of its choosing. In the 
case of M. Gueroult they have elected a person who has little more 
claim on their sympathy than professing himself of the Opposition, 
and that a Government nominee was set up against him.”— Times. 


034 


OUGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


“From 1793 to the present clay Jacobinism has proved itself 
indirectly the surest support of despotism and injustice.”— Times. 

“Has he resigned himself to another winter of distress among 
the classes who are the chief prop of his throne?”—Saturday Review. 

“His purple was only the symbol of a dexterous conspiracy,” 
—Ih 

“ When the Emperor of the French means to be mysterious, 
there is no man in Europe, who is such an adept in the art.”— B. 

“ Vague language is the Emperor’s peculiar accomplishment.” 

—B, 

H. de Persigny was, at that crisis, made the scapegoat of his 
master, without whose sanction it cannot for a moment be imagined, 
that he would have taken a single step, or issued a single mandate. 
All his threats and warnings only displayed the extent of his alarm 
and anxiety. It seems, however, that he is not to experience any 
very marked token of Imperial displeasure, and it is probable, that 
the temporary suspension of his official career will turn to be merely 
a “reculer pour mieux sauter,” 

Et ce masque trompeur de fausse hardiesse, 

Nous dcguise sa crainte et couvre sa foiblesse, 

Corneille. 

“M. de Persigny has the coolness to tell the public through his 
Prefect that, ‘ on certain points, and particularly in the great centres 
of population, more habitually accessible to the excitements of the 
press, opposition candidates succeeded in taking universal suffrage by 
surprise.’ It is impossible, that M. de Persigny can believe a 
word of wiiat he himself asserts. It is impossible, after what 
has happened, that he does not understand the real signification of 
these elections—namely, that the ‘ important centres of population ’ 
are tired of the system which M. de Persigny prefers—are ashamed 
that Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium possess what they are deprived 
of, and desire a larger measure of constitutional liberty.”— Times. 

“M. de Persigny’s removal from the Ministry is announced as 
certain. The general clamour against him, and the strong, though 
more subdued, complaints of some of his own Prefects long ago 
rendered his position precarious; but his management of the late 
elections—with what result everybody knows—has now made it 
untenable. It is admitted, that, were his counsels followed, the defeat of 


OXJGIIT FRANCE TO WORSHIP TOE BONAPARTES? 


635 


so many of his candidates would he punished hy acts of repression surpass- 
my anything that has been seen since his accession to office.” 

“ M. cle Yienne lias the reputation of being a good lawyer, though 
no politician. If the Emperor fixes on him as the successor to 
M. de Persigny, it is, no doubt, because he has discovered qualities for 
that difficult office which no one else has ever suspected,”— Times, 

‘ ( It is said, that M. Lagueronniere has a chance of getting a port* 
folio; and this would be ‘the unkindest cut of all,’ for the feeling 
between M. de Persigny and his former subordinate is as bitter as it 
can well be.” 

Je veux bicn toutefois agir avec addresse 
Joindre beaucoup d’honneur a bien peu de rudesse, 

Le ebasser avec gloire, et meler doucement, 

Le prix de son merite a mon ressentiment. 

Corneille. 

“ Tlie Minister, we have little doubt, agrees with his Sovereign 
that his tenure of the Home-office has been a failure, and that it is 
better he should no longer raise up enemies to Imperialism by 
ondeavouring to drill everybody, high and low, into passive obedience 
to it. How the Emperor allowed him to undo all that had been 
done in the way of liberalism, to neutralise the Imperial speeches of 
two years since, to warn journals, to urge on Prefocts to all sorts of 
petty despotism, and to establish a minuteness of interference which 
condescended to worry the most obscure Oppositionist in the most 
remote department, is really remarkable. But the Paris elections 
have at length convinced His Majesty that M. do Persigny, who has, 
in effect, returned thirty Opposition members, is too dangerous to be 
left to himself.”— Ih. 

“ M, de Persigny will probably be quite ready to admit, that he 
has made a great mistake in his recent electioneering. Ilis zeal for 
the cause of Imperialism has been so unmixed with discretion, that 
he has brought on it the most signal reverse it has experienced since 
its foundation. His circulars, his addresses, his open attempts to 
coerce the city of Paris in its choice, were errors so great, that wo 
not only wonder how Napoleon should have permitted them, but 
how even M. de Persigny, with common knowledge of the world and 
human nature, could have expected from them any result but that 
which came to pass.”— Ih. 

“The general result of the changes undoubtedly is in favour of 


630 


OTJGIIT FRANCE TO WORSIIIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


liberalism and peace, but the Emperor is too much his own minister for us 
to regard anything but the indications of his own personal ivillP — Times. 


It must be admitted, that the awkward and audacious endeavours 
of the Imperial mouthpiece (for he is, of course, neither more nor 
less) to convert the signal defeat into a splendid triumph, almost 
1 exceeded all power of face.’ He resembled Sir Fretful Plagiary, 
who, when it was suggested to him, that the interest of his play fell 
off in the fifth act, at once boldly replied, ‘ 1 Falls ? no; rises you 
mean.” 

“ What the French people wished by the Plebiscite of 1851 was 
not only to constitute the Government and liberty on unshakable 
bases, it was to thenceforth renounce the idea of copying, in a demo¬ 
cratic country lilce ours, the aristocratic constitution of a neighbouring 
nation ; it was more particularly to condemn the disastrous doctrine, 
which had for result to mate the power fall from the hands of Royalty 
into those of the speakers of the Chamber. The Opposition declared 
very loudly that during the last ten years the country had changed 
its feelings, that it aspired not only to perfect and modify the play of 
our liberties, but to change their essential principles.”— Persigny. 

“ The late elections will have done more for their cohesion even 
than time. Attacked on all sides, and resisting all shocks, our poli¬ 
tical edifice has only become more solid, and in the Chamber as well 
as in the country, the Grovernment party is henceforth constituted. 
Another considerable result acquired by the late elections is that our 
institutions, criticised by the Opposition candidates, under the pre¬ 
tence of their requiring to be made perfect, have received from the suc¬ 
cess of the Government candidates a fresh ratification .”— lb. 

“ On some points, and particularly in the great centres of popula¬ 
tion, more habitually accessible to the excitements of the press, it has 
succeeded in surprising universal suffrage; but the immense majority 
of the country has responded to the appeal of the Grovernment, and 
has only allowed the coalition a few names to console itself for its defeat .” 

“The Emperor’s Government, you are aware, rejects no one. 
Formed of men of all parties, and constantly recruiting itself from 
among them, it remains faithful to the mission of uniting them all. 


* Quiconque mo plaira n’a besoin quo de moi. 

Corneille. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


637 


It is open to all right-minded men, and only sets aside those who, 
not accepting the fundamental bases of our institutions, such as they 
were determined by the Plebiscite of 1851, are from that fact in 
opposition to the Trill of the French people.”— Persigny. 

Ecco il don dei tyranni; a lor rassembra 
Di dar la vita a chi non dan la morte. 

Maffei. 

“ His disappointment is expressed in the wholesale persecution of 
newspapers, not only in indiscreet attacks on Opposition candidates; 
and this official circular reveals, with a curious candour, the full 
and complete discovery that a despotism cannot take constitutional 
Government for a model.” 

The result of the late elections will, however, be rather disastrous 
than desirable, if the Man of December’s defeat should lead him to 
adopt a policy of pretended and plausible concessions. He may be 
so intimidated'* by the rejection of so many adherents,! and by the 

* “ France is reaping the fruits of the example which Paris has set in returning the 
whole of the Opposition candidates. The Emperor has become nervous in his palace, 
and* not desiring to lose his crown through the obstinacy of his Ministers, as his 
predecessor, Louis Philippe did, he has dismissed the obnoxious Count Persigny 
from his post, and made several other important changes in his Cabinet.”— 
Scotsman. 

f “Itis now certain, that the avowed Opposition in the new Chamber will be 35, 
for the six just elected bring it to 33. This number will probably be increased in 
the course of the session, for the hesitating or the timid will see by these examples 
that they may indulge in the luxury of an independent vote without the danger of 
forfeiting their seats, even against the utmost the Prefects can do against them.”— 
Times. ,. 

“ The Imperial Court gave judgment to-day in the case of M. Cassimir Perrier 
and the editor of the Impartial, by which the accused were both acquitted.” 

In one quarter, at least, the disaster was deemed so alarming, that a second 
“ coup d'etat ” was strenuously recommended, and would doubtless have been re¬ 
sorted to, if the country could (as on the first occasion) have been tampered with or 
taken by surprise. 

‘'It was seriously proposed to make an appeal to the nation, to demand from it, by 
means of a plebiscite, new powers for the Emperor to modify the Constitution, with 
a view to strengthening the Executive for the future; and, in the present instance, 
to annul the elections of Paris, as well as others in which the official candidates were 
defeated. I believe there was but one person in the Cabinet capable of proposing 
such a scheme, and resolved to carry it through. For some time people feared that 


638 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


return of so many adversaries, as to try to hoax and hoodwink 
some portion at least of the upright and undaunted phalanx of 
patriots, which is now confederated against him, and which, though 
formidable by their numbers, are still more so by their influence and 
ability. It is, however, to be hopod, that they will have sufficient 
discrimination and determination to refuse his bribes and repel his 
blandishments. If they admit his advances and accept his offers— 
if they condone his crimes and enter his service, they will be placed 
in a more ignominious position, when driving in his gilded chariots 
through the Caudine forks of apostacy, to a council or court ball at 
Compeigne, than when dragged in the felon’s vans through the 
public thoroughfares to the dungeon by the tools of a rebel usurper. 
The enlightened and highminded Frenchmen of the present day 
would do well to imitate the example of the late General Oudinot,* 
by remaining as scrupulously true to their principles of loyalty and 
consistency as he was to his oath of allegiance, when the first Cor¬ 
sican re-landed in France in 1815. He lived to see the downfall of 
the daring invader whom he refused to join. And they may bo 
privileged to witness tho discomfiture and downfall of a tyranny as 
illegal, as ignominious, and as intolerable. What confidence can 
the most credulous optimist place in a ruler, who has not only estab¬ 
lished by perjury, fraud, and murder, but has carried on, until the 
present moment, the most galling and degrading despotism, and who 
is the incarnation of a selfishness tho most unscrupulous and the 
most unprincipled, selecting as his ministers the most obscure and 
obsequious of his minions ? 

“ Unless they are unduly elated by their promotion, they will allow 
the Emperor to he the real Minister for their respective departments , which 
is probably ono of the objects which he had in view when ho chose 
them.”— Times. 

“ The Emperor Napoleon, having decided that his ministers should 

Iris advice ■would be taken, and that the whole of the Ministers would be forced to 
resign, and leave their colleague responsible for the consequences. Fortunately, the 
Emperor decided on a different line of policy, notwithstanding the precedents which 
were probably brought forward.”-— Times. 

* On the return of Napoleon, Oudinot refused to betray the Government to 
which he had sworn allegiance, and did not join the Imperial standard during the 
Hundred Days. To the joy of the great majority of the French people, 
Napoleon was finally overthrown,”— Times. 


OUGHT FRANCE TO -WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES? 


639 


bo exclusively responsible to liimself, consistently kept them at a 
distance from the representative body. According to the official 
phrase, he guarded effectually against the uncertainties and agita¬ 
tions of Parliamentary Government. In plainer language, ho 
deprived the Assembly of all influence in public affairs; and , by the same 
process, he reduced his Ministers into subordinate agents of his will. The 
Senate and the Legislative Body servod to conceal the bare machinery 
of despotism; but they were wholly powerless with respect to domestic 
and foreign policy, nor have they even now succeeded in establishing 
a control over the finances.”— Saturday Review. 

"What could be more liberal, conscientious, and disinterested than 
the principles which inaugurated the commencement of his rule in 
1848, for the purpose of lulling suspicion, and generating con¬ 
fidence ? 

He seemed then inclined to adopt for his motto or his monitor—■ 

Je hais l’art de regner, quo so permet dcs crimes— 

De quel front donnerais-jc un cxcmple aujourd’liui 
Que mes loia des demain puniraient en autrui ? 

Corneille. 

Why, then, should wise and wary politicians again trust his 
pledges or his professions ? 

How surprising is the credulity of the “able editor” who could 
venture to credit that “the Emperor has evidently resolved to pro¬ 
ceed steadily in his work of ‘ crowning the edifice of his liberty.’ 
Ho has judged the elections with a sharper eye than M. de Per- 
signy; ho has seen in the return of the leaders of the old parties to 
political life the final sanction of the Empire, and he is prepared, we 
believe, to welcome cordially their aid in the promotion of the great 
interests of France.” (? ? ?)— Times. 

“ The writer in La France concludes as follows:— 

“ ‘In our opinion, these ministerial changes have but one signifi¬ 
cation. They mean :—Maintenance of the liberal concessions made 
with so much foresight by the Empire. They also mean:—Calm for 
the public mind after the somewhat lively emotions caused by the 
recent elections, and an appeal to conciliation in the name of the 
tutelary guarantees of right and respect for the law.’ ” 

“ On every ground this ministerial modification must bo recoived 


640 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

with satisfaction by all wlio desire the prosperity of France and the 
peace of Europe. A first condition of that prosperity is a cordial 
agreement between the Sovereign and the people. The Emperor 
has shown that lie wills that accord, and we believe that France, 
recognising the great things as well in war as in peace which the 
Emperor has done for her, yet looking back with dread to revolution, 
and no longer seeking the unbridled liberty which was once her 
passion, will thankfully accept the measured liberties the Emperor 
offers, and work with him in perfect harmony to develop her power 
and consolidate his dynasty.” (? ?)—English Paper. 

More recent and sagacious observers have arrived at an opposite 
and more probable conclusion. 

“I cannot record any signs of an approach to a more constitu¬ 
tional administration and policy. On the contrary, the wind ap¬ 
pears to be shifting round to the retrograde point, as if the Emperor 
thought it rather wiser to return to that more restricted and dicta¬ 
torial system of government which characterised the foundation and 
early days of the empire .”—Morning Post. 

I conclude, by reprinting a dialogue, which appeared a few years 
ago, at a crisis somewhat similar to the present, though not quite so 
momentous or decisive in its results. 


“ Sir, —I think it not improbable that, in consequence of the 
1 concessions ’ tendered by an intimidated autocrat to the, I trust, 
inflexible Anti-Imperialists, the following dialogue, slightly altered 
from Cato , act ii., scene 2, may be supposed to take place between 
M. Jules Favre and M. Moray. The necessity of the metre compels 
me to substitute 1 Boney ’ for ‘ Napoleon ’—‘ mats cela revient an memc? 

“I am, Sir, yours, &c. 

«L. T A.” 

“Dec. 10, I860.’ 1 


Morny. 

Boney sends liealth to Favre. 

Favre. 

Could he send it 

To Favre’s slaughtered friends,* it would he welcome. 
Does he restore full freedom to the senate ? 


* Who died at Cayenne or Lambessa. 






OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


641 


MORNY. 

My business is with Favre. Boney feels 
4 he straits to which he’s driven. And as he knows 
Favre’s high worth, is anxious for his love. 

Favre. 

My love is grafted on the fate of France. 

Would he serve Favre ? Bid him spare his country. 

Tell your Dictator this ; and tell him, Favre 
Disdains a boon which he has power to offer. 

Morny. 

France and her senators submit to Boney— 

Such generals and great men are laid aside 
As spurned his gold, and dared defy his triumphs. 

Why will not Favre be this Boney’s friend ? 

Favre. 

These very reasons thou hast urged forbid it. 

Morny. 

Favre, I’ve orders to expostulate 

And reason with you, as from friend to friend. 

Think on the storm that gathers o’er your head, 

And, should these offers fail, may burst upon it. 

Still may you stand high in your country’s honours ; 

Do but comply, and make your peace with Boney, 

France will rejoice, and cast its eyes on Favre 
As on a true and honest son. 

Favre. 

No more! % 

I must not think of power on such conditions. 

Morny. 

Boney is well acquainted with your virtues, 

And therefore sets this value on your love. 

Let him but know the price of Favre’s friendship, 

And name your terms. 

Favre. 

Bid him disband his legions, 
Restore the commonwealth to liberty, 

Submit his actions to the public censure, 

And stand the judgment of an unpack’d senate— 

Bid him do this, and Favre is his friend. 

Morny. 

Favre, the world talks loudly of your wisdom— 

s s 


642 


OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAFARTES ? 


Favre. 

Nay, more. Though Favre’s voice was never raised 
To clear the guilty, and to varnish crimes, 

Myself will mount the tribune in his favour, 

And strive to gain his pardon from the people. 

Horny. 

A style like this becomes a conqueror. 

Favre. 

Horny, a style like this becomes a Frenchman. 

Horny. 

What is a Frenchman that is Boney’s foe ? 

Favre. 

Greater than Boney—he’s a friend to virtue ! 

Morny. 

Consider, Favre, you’re in Paris now, 

Where Boney rules the Press, the Courts, the Senate—- 
You can’t now thunder in a free Assembly, 

With eloquence and wit to second you. 

Favre. 

Let him consider that who drove us'thence ; 

’Tis Boney’s gag that made our Senate mute 
And thinn’d its ranks—alas! thy dazzled eye 
Beholds this man in a false glaring light, 

Which conquest and success have thrown upon him. 
Didst thou but view him right, thou dst see him black 
With murder, treason, sacrilege, and crimes 
That strike my soul with horror but to name them— 

I know thou look’st on me as on a man 
Beset with ills, and covered with no stars— 

But, by the gods, I swear, millions of worlds 
Should never buy me to be like that Boney.* 


* A Roman “ saviour of society” (Caracalla), who committed one murder (not 
many thousands) in order to monopolise the Imperial throne, “ exhorted the people to 
thank the Gods for his own preservation, and to be no longer divided in their minds 
or purposes, but, looking up to him alone, to pass their lives without care ; for that, 
as Jupiter concentrated all power in himself, so he had invested one man with 

supreme authority.When the populace displeased him (perhaps on the 4th of 

December), he ordered the soldiers to fall upon them, and have recourse to violence 
and rapine; and as it was impossible to distinguish those who had indulged in in¬ 
vectives (for no one in so great a crowd would plead guilty), they attacked promis- 
cously all whom they met, and either slew them, or took away all they possessed by 
way of ransom, and allowed them to live .”—Herodian IY. 




OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 


643 


Morny. 

Does Favre send this answer back to Boney, 

For all his generous cares, and proffered friendship ? 

Favre. 

His cares for me are insolent and vain. 

Presumptuous man! my country honours Favre. 

W'ould Boney show the greatness of his soul ?] 

Let him recal my honoured, exiled friends, 

With contrite soul resign ill-gotten power, 

And yield to men much better than himself. 

\ ‘ 

Morny. 

Your high, unconquered heart, makes you forget 
You are in France. You rush on your destruction. 

But I have done. When I relate to Boney 
The fate of this unhappy embassy, 

Compiegne will be in tears. 

[Exit Morny. 

It may, perhaps, not be inopportune, or inappropriate to in¬ 
troduce the opinions expressed by two eminent members of the 
British Senate, in reference to the conduct, character, and motives 
of the French ruler. For those which are, or, at all events were, 
entertained by Mr. Boebuck, we are indebted to Mr. Bright, who, 
during a late animated discussion on the subject of volunteer diplo¬ 
macy, expressed himself as follows:— 

“It is not long since the hon. and learned gentleman held very 
different opinions. 1 recollect in this House, only about three years 
ago, the hon. and learned gentleman said: ‘ I hope I may be per¬ 
mitted to express my opinion, even though it should affect so great a 
potentate as the Emperor of the French. I have no faith in the 
Emperor of the French .’ On another occasion he said, though not in 
this House, ‘ I am still of opinion that we have nothing hut enmity and 
had faith to look for from the Emperor of the French ; ’ and he went on 
to say that, though he had been laughed at, he still adopted the 
patriotic character of ‘Tear’em,’ and was still at his post. When 
the hon. and learned gentleman came back from his expedition to 
Cherbourg, does the House recollect the language which he used on 
that occasion ?—which, if it expresses the sentiments which he felt, 
I think he might have been content to have withheld. Beferring to 
the salutation between the Emperor of the French and the Queen of 


644 OUGHT FRANCE TO WORSHIP THE BONAPARTES ? 

these kingdoms, he said, ‘When I saw his perjured lips touch that 
hallowed cheek.’ ” 

Mr. Bright’s own sentiments are developed with his wonted 
energy and effect:— 

“I do not understand the policy of the Emperor as these new 
Ministers declare it, because one gentleman says he is about to make 
war with Russia, another that he is about to make war with 
America. I am disposed to look at what he is already doing; and I 
find that he is holding Rome against the opinion of all Italy — that he is 
conquering Mexico by painful steps , every footprint marked by devastation 
and blood ; that he is warring—in some desultory manner, it may be 
—in China, and, for aught I know, may be about to do it in Japan. 
Well, I say, that, if we were to add Russia and the United States , and 
that he is to engage in this dismemberment of the greatest Eastern empire 
and the great Western republic , he has a greater ambition than 
Louis XIV., and greater daring than the first of his name ; and 

THAT, IF HE GRASPS THESE GREAT TRANSACTIONS, HIS DYNASTY WILL 
FALL, AND BE BURIED IN THE RUINS OF HIS OWN AMBITION.” 

We are told by Laharpe, that, on a certain occasion, Voltaire, 
after having recited a sublime passage from Racine, exclaimed, 
“Non, je ne suis rien apres cet homme la.” This is the very 
language employed by Mephistophiles on the fatal and flagitious 
night of the second of December. When he saw, two days later, 
the streets of Paris covered with mangled and mutilated corpses, 
including thousands of victims of both sexes and of every age, and 
heard the shrieks of the agonised-dying, and the screams of the 
distracted survivors, he added— 

II est bien plus savant en mon art que moi meme. 

Quinault. 

And when he beheld Eorey conveying to dungeons, in felon-vans, 
all that was in Prance most enlightened, trustworthy, and illustrious, 
he embraced the audacious author and finisher of these enormi¬ 
ties, and said, with an applauding smile :— 

Ton premier coup d 'Hat egale tous les miens. 


W. H. Collingridge, 117 to 119, Aldersgate Street, London, E.C. 



ERRATA. 


Page 5, line 8 from bottom, for Vestramm , read Vertrauens ; line 7, for Vbung , read 
ii bung. 

P. 7, line 17, for bliss, read bJoss; line 18, for ihneu, read ihnen; line 19, for 
pcnsitatcsque, read pcnsitatisque. 

P.8, line 17, for natura, read naturd ; line 20, for privatumque, read privatimque. 
P. 9, line 13, for regnntum read regnaturum. 

P. 10, line 4, for du read de. 

P. 12, line 4 from bottom, for en , read on . 

P. 25, line 12 from bottom, for regis read reges. 

P. 30, line 13, for naufrager , read naufragar. 

P. 37, line 15, for indicision, read indecision. 

P. 38, line 3, for ctablier read etablir. 

P. 43, line 15, for sout read sont; line 6, from bottom, delete preceding ; and after 
lucubrations read— borrowed from the Examiner. 

P. 51, line 3, from bottom for place read places. 

P. 66, line 11 from bottom, for gaspilles read gaspillcs. 

P. 77, line 24, for 1832, read 1852. 

P. 83, line 16, for dishearted , read disheartened. 

P. 118, line 22, for Sick nich read Sick unit, 

P. 134, line 3, for resource , read recourse. 

P. 147, line 10, for tirrannia read tirannia; line 13, for adiandoli read odi<mdo; 
line 13, for veglium , read veglion ; line 15, for pitrum, read patrimonium ; line 15, 
for preventus read proventus ; line 16, for usque absintes , read its que absumtis ; 
line 17, for i epublicam, read rem publicam; line 18, delete comma after domum. 

P. 155, line 9 from bottom, for endearing read endeavouring. 

P. 159, line 9, for loi read Jo is. 

P. 106, line 5 from bottom, for eur read ais; line 5, for Meden , read seinem ; line 7, 
for machen read reden. 

P. 178, line 12 from bottom, for ecouter read ecoute. 

P. 233, line 8 from bottom, for les auriers, read lauricrs. 

P. 239, line 4 from bottom, for Piscuso read Ricuso. 

P. 240, line 3, for fiuti read finti; line 9, for prof ever, read proferir. 

P. 248, line 13, for presented read preserved. 

P. 255, line 12 from bottom, for heros le seul, read keros le sont ; for rien eux read 
rien pour eux. 

P. 288, line 17, for servande read servando. 

P. 291, line 1 from bottom, for vout read vont; line 4, insert n'est after roi; line 5, 
for remercerai read remercierai, 

P. 301, line 2, for lews, hauts, read lews hauts; for tc^nissant, read teonisscnt. 

P. 317, line 21, for caches read caclier; line 22, for glus read fut. 

P. 334, line 14, for oppressiv read opprcsso. 

P. 340, line 9, for boarnar read bramar. 

P. 350, line 7, for gain read fame. 

P. 368, line 11, leave out quotation before The I tali in ; 'ine 16, read in for un. 

P. 372, line 19 from bottom, for provinces read brigands 

W 401, line 6, for iniquitious read iniquitous ; line 7, for Sporza read Sforza ; line 
19, for and the “ no taliauxilio ” principle , read and act upon the “ non tali auxilio" 
principle ; line 20, for exhorted to act upon , read exhorted to act. 



ERRATA. 


P. 405, line 20, for pour-res read fourrer. 

P. 406, line 10, for provide read promote; line 4 from bottom, for nest read 
m'est; line 1, for Susulter read Insulter. 

P. 407, line 5 from bottom, for withdrew read withdraw. 

P. 410, line 12 from bottom insert it before results. 

P. 417, line 7, for our victims , read its own victims. 

P. 424, line 5 from bottom, for tmprevu, read imprevu; for emportes read em- 
portes. 

P. 431, line 9 from bottom, for sacrified read sacrificed. 

P. 451, line 12, for “ The dreaming ” read The dreaming ; for lefto read Lcfio. 

P. 452, line 8, for Cancres, &c., read 

.... miserables, 

7 

Cancres , lieres, et pauvres diahles. 

P. 456, line 16, for Peccit read ne Peccet; and dele ne before ridendus line 17, for 
pas Vage read par Vage. 

P. 458, line 12, after events, read event , add “ Private Letter .” 

P. 464, line 18, for voir read vois. 

P. 466, line 4, for jovem read Jovtm. 

P. 467, leave out paragraph beginning When Voltaire. 

P. 474, line 5 from bottom, for mucrtis read meurtriers. 

P. 476, line 3, for that read their. 

P. 490, line 3 from bottom, for futher read further. 

P. 525, line 11, for notrils, read nostrils. 

P. 527, line 7, for dcstations read detestation. 

P. 534, line 12, for Te Deo , te fugimet venti, te urnbilo cceli,” read To T>ca, te fugiunt 
venti; te nuhila cceli; line 16, for mcenora militari , read mcenera militiai. 

P. 535, line 13, for ce read se ; line 5 from bottom, for donne read donnie. 

P. 536, line 14, for s’ importeraient read s’ emporteraient; line 17, for nous vous , read 
nous nous. 

P. 537, line 12, for mond read monde ; line 13, for cessarai read cesserai ; line 16, for 
vous meltiez, read vous vous mettiez ; line 17 , for passant, read passent; line 1J. 
from bottom, for galanterie , read voire galanterie ; line 9 from bottom, for capt.if, 
read captifs. 

P. 538, line 19 from bottom, for armee, read aimee ; line 9 from bottom, for Flew isont, 
read Fleurirant. 

P. 539, line 4, for dicebatus , read diccbatur; line 5 from bottom, for condonne , read 
couronne. 

P. 542, line 19. for oneness, read interference. 

P. 548, line 11, for sec, read sac. 

P. 550, line 5 from bottom, for about, read over. 

P. 555, line 7 from bottom, Asmodee is a foot note to II. 

P. 558. line 3, for veille, read veiller ; line 4, for ni, read ici; line 7 from bottom, for 
fuit voter, read font rotir ; line 4 from bottom, for royalists, read royalist. 

P. 559, line 8 from bottom, for Pullaire, read Rulliere. 

P. 581, line 1 from bottom, leave out quotation from Shakespeare. 

P. 585, line 16, for {it is to be feared), read it is to be feared. 

P. 597, last line, add Shakespeare, 

P. 600, leave out paragraph beginning Those ivho have , §c. 

P. 608, line 21, for denormat, read denorm. 

P. 609, line 13 from bottom, for rompcz, read rampez. 

P. 612; line 8 from bottom, leave out why revenge. 

P. 614, line 13 from bottom, for vient je read viens-je. 

P. 615, line 1, for ils outragent, read ils ■ Voutragest; line 19, for morde, read 
monde ; line 20, for subjuque, read subjugue. 

P. 621, line 10 from bottom, leave out “ before in reference. 

P. 626, line 18, leave out “before I think; line 16 from bottom, for only, read long. 

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